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I've been using a tablet PC (Viewsonic Viewpad 1000) for several months with Linux. The touchscreen works fine, there's an on-screen keyboard, and while I haven't bothered to get xstroke (Grafitti-like, full-screen handwriting recognizer) working, there's a Debian package and I have used xstroke a lot on the iPaq -- It Just Works.

My company is planning to use them as portable wireless point-of-sale systems for restaurants. They allow waiters' orders to get back to the kitchen and bar a lot faster, which can speed up table turn times by a couple of minutes. May not sound like much but it's important to restaurant owners.

Bill Gribble
Linux Developers Group

When I first saw the story about Zumiez (Slashdot ran it probably 3-4 months ago for the first time... short memories!) I contacted Ximian about it, because I figured if they were going into that business they might want a choice of point-of-sale systems to provide (my company makes Linux point of sale systems). IIRC, Zumiez is using a web-based point of sale system they developed in-house.

Shameless plug for an all-Linux point of sale system: Linux Developers Group.... it's called OpenCheckout. It uses PostgreSQL on the back end and can service many registers per store on the same DB. In fact we are almost finished with multi-store polling, either dialup or Internet. It is made up of some open-source components (including parts of Gnucash, for which I was a developer for a good while, and Mercator, the Java POS front end) and some non-open-source components. It's just now really ready to roll out in real stores... have a look.

Just to head off some of the inevitable: Yes we completely honor and respect the GPL on those components and have no intention of trying to release open-source code under a proprietary license.

Bill Gribble
grib@linuxdevel.com

You're right that Gnucash is not a business accounting package as it stands.

However, significant amounts of development effort are going to make it useful in a business environment. Right now, the most active part of that effort is the OpenCheckout point of sale project. It's not a general-purpose business accounting system, but the features we're adding and redesigning to make the Gnucash core work as a point-of-sale accounting engine and management interface are part of what needs to be done to make a more general-purpose system.

My company (Linux Developers Group) employs most of the core Gnucash developers, and we are working hard to make money from POS and other vertical applications of the Gnucash code base. We have a lot of interest from grocery, hobby, and government clients, and it's likely that POS and inventory management will drive the development done by paid developers of Gnucash for some time to come.

Also, several volunteer developers are working on business infrastructure for Gnucash.

Since Gnucash has been the #1 or #2 most active Gnome project (by the Gnome Hacking Activity measure) since the Gnome Summary started including our stats, I think it's fair to say that we are working very hard on that and we have some prolific hackers.

So, while it's true that you can't use Gnucash for your business right now, don't write it off.

Thanks,
Bill Gribble
grib@linuxdevel.com

About Gnucash and LGP: LGP signed a term sheet with Gnumatic in early 2000 to commercialize Gnucash. Many of the core Gnucash developers were hired, including me (I actually never worked on Gnucash until I was hired by Gnumatic, but continue to do so now).

LGP provided only a small fraction of the funds they promised and the term sheet was never turned into an investment agreement. Gnumatic's employees were all laid off or quit by May 2001. Gnumatic's founder, Linas Vepstas, continues to do business under that name in hopes of paying the large amount of back salary owed to former Gnumatic employees.

I found outside funding and started Linux Developers Group to do custom software, consulting, and possibly release Gnucash commercially. I hired the Gnucash developers that worked for Gnumatic. We have started moving the Gnucash code base away from strictly personal finance and into vertical apps; we are starting a joint venture with a POS developer (Global Retail Technology), for example.

Bill Gribble <grib@linuxdevel.com>
Linux Developers Group

Congradulations on starting Linux Developers Group, Inc. Despite the nay-sayers, I've been increasingly interested in starting my own company around a product idea, and of course I want to GPL it. My question is, did you create a business plan and sales forcasts that so many books say to, or do you think that it doesn't really apply to new-style GPL based business since everything comes down to a user's choice? What did you identify as the main pitfalls? Have you identified marketing opportunities? Thx.