MoneyDance 2003 Reviewed

TheMadPenguin writes "For those of you who may not have heard, MoneyDance 2003 was released on March 28th, 2003 for general public consumption. It is available for Linux, MacOS X, and also Windows. Geared toward current Intuit Quicken and Microsoft Money users, MoneyDance 2003 is packed full of features. It's reviewed at MadPenguin.org."

Comments

Four days?

[Anonymous Coward]

No way I'm four days worth of first posts.
Just no way.
If I don't hit the submit button soon them I'm sure...

MoneyDance is a good start...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just curious when MoneyDinner, MoneyMovie, and MoneyGoBackToMyPlace are scheduled for release!

Re:MoneyDance is a good start...

[Gen. Fault]

I'm just curious when MoneyDinner, MoneyMovie, and MoneyGoBackToMyPlace are scheduled for release!

And soon after that (I hope) is MoneyShot!

Re:MoneyDance is a good start...

[Kneht]

Can I just install MoneyGoBackToMyPlace, or is it just an add-on that requires MoneyDance, MoneyDinner, and MoneyMovie be installed first?

Re:MoneyDance is a good start...

[Anonymous Coward]

Followed years later by LapDance

Re:MoneyDance is a good start...

[TheConfusedOne]

> I'm just curious when MoneyDinner, MoneyMovie, and MoneyGoBackToMyPlace are scheduled for release!

And soon after that (I hope) is MoneyShot!

Well, if you want MoneyComeBackAnotherTime then you want to make sure that the release of MoneyShot doesn't follow too closely after MoneyGoBackToMyPlace. :-D

Re:MoneyDance is a good start...

[Ponty]

Then it can track your child support payments on that convenient little calender widget.

Re:MoneyDance is a good start...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh...the old Girlfriend 2.0 joke

Re:MoneyDance is a good start...

[jemenake]

And soon after that (I hope) is MoneyShot!

And, most importantly, is it a stand-alone install, or do I have to purchase MoneyDinner, MoneyMovie, etc.?

Re:MoneyDance is a good start...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL!! Yeah! In my mouth first please!!

Re:MoneyDance is a good start...

[Anonymous Coward]

And right after that is LeaveTheMoneyOnTheTable! (At least that is how it usually works for me).

Just in time to miss tax season!

[Angry White Guy]

Oh well, not like I did mine yet anyways.

*Was* reviewed at MadPenguin

[matt_wilts]

Predictably Slashdotted. FP?

Possibly /.'d

[BluGuy]

Unless "Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 28 Warning: Access denied for user: 'apache@localhost' (Using password: NO) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32 Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Access denied for user: 'apache@localhost' (Using password: NO) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32 Warning: MySQL: A link to the server could not be established in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32 Unable to select database" is the article text.

Review is slashdotted.. anyone got a mirror?

[thing12]

Already!! There are no comments on this story and it's already slashdotted.

Does it import Gnucash files?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was kiddind, the body said "Geared toward current windows users".

Re:Does it import Gnucash files?

[Deth_Master]

not necessarily true...
You could be a Wine user. I run Quicken 2002 Basic in Linux.
But it probably doesn't import Gnucash files...
gnucash is a ho to get working anyway, at least from source

one of

[REBloomfield]

the biggest beefs i had when i switched from windows to Mac was the abscence of Quicken, or anything similar.. so yay!

Re:one of

[mental_telepathy]

When did you switch to Mac? I have had Quicken on my mac since 1999. They have kept pretty current, as well. Downloading financial transactions took some time, but is available in the most recent version.

Re:one of

[Anonymous Coward]

You're joking, right?

My iMac *came* with Quicken 2002 Deluxe, right there on the desktop from a fresh install of Jaguar.

I also have Quicken 2003 Deluxe, and Quickbooks Pro, both native Aqua applications.

Re:one of

[mccalli]

Reading the comments in this thread I'm guessing you're UK-based. I can understand the other posters being confused about your comments as Quicken is available in the US.

The lack of a UK Quicken version is the one thing stopping me getting a Mac. Seriously. I had other gripes before, but they've all been resolved one by one. I'm at the point where I'm considering getting one anyway and then running Quicken under VPC.

In the meantime, please email Intuit and tell them you want a version. I've done that, and got a polite response back saying that if there's enough interest it will be done. Of course, they won't know if there's any interest if nobody tells 'em...

Cheers,
Ian

Re:one of

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard that quicken on mac really sucks. I know that quickbooks is a piece of *()&^#. You may want to consider moving to gnucash. Dig around yourself for more info, but I think you'll be disapointed. Intuit doesn't really care about their mac users.

MoneyDance on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a MoneyDance user for a long time.

I've tried this on Linux - don't even bother with the Linux version.

The Linux version is buggy and slow - it needs a LOT of work before it is viable as money management software.

The Windows version, on the other hand, is quick and isn't riddled with the bugs that the Linux version is. In fact, about six months ago I weened myself off of Quicken entirely and now I ONLY use MoneyDance on Windows.

I just wish the Linux version wasn't so buggy/shitty.

Re:MoneyDance on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been through them all on almost every platform - Moneydance, Quicken, Gnucash...

and you're absolutely right. Moneydance on Linux does BLOW - however, I've been very happy with Moneydance on Windows. I'll never buy Quicken again.

And to the Gnucash advocates - I would urge you to do a feature by feature comparison of Gnucash and Moneydance. Gnucash is lacking in MANY areas.

Unfortunately, the fact is that there is no decent money management/accounting software out there right now for Linux.

Given the dry nature of this type of software, I suspect that there isn't anything viable out there because Opensource developers consider it boring - and maybe thats the problem with OSS.

Re:MoneyDance on Linux

[McWilde]

I thought this looked familiar... It wasn't considered informative then.

Re:MoneyDance on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical slashdotter. Anyone criticizes linux, it must be a troll.

Have you considered the possibility that maybe both of these posts came from informed users of the software and that the Linux version really did suck?

Re:MoneyDance on Linux

[molarmass192]

Nice fscking troll ... it's a java app and it uses the same code. Besides, it's common knowledge (except to you apparently) that Java apps run FASTER under Linux than on that sad sack excuse for an OS you call Windows. Whomever modded your dirty post up is a friggen moron. Now get back to work (unless you work in the FUD department that is) before Ballmer catches you ogling the goatse guy again.

Re:MoneyDance on Linux

[sahrss]

Mod parent up, I noticed this too. Same troll as before.

Re:MoneyDance on Linux

[ktnbob]

That has not been my experience. I've used Moneydance in both Windows and Linux, and the trick in Linux is to choose the right version of Java. Once I've done this, the program runs very, very well, in both OS.

Moneydance

[lostchicken]

It's not free. See Here.
However, GNUCash will run on all the platforms listed, and is free.

Re:Moneydance

[override11]

I dont believe the article said ANYWHERE it was free.

Because it will run on Linux, you assume it is? You know,, Linux will never become the de-facto OS if people are not willing to PAY for developers to make software for it.

Re:Moneydance

[jdreed1024]

However, GNUCash [gnucash.org] will run on all the platforms listed, and is free.

First of all, GNUcash does not run on Windows without much frobbing. Yes, I know we don't like Windows 'round these parts, but there are plenty of folks who do. Secondly, GNUcash is not designed to be a drop-in replacement for Quicken. This program clearly is. I just downloaded the Windows version, and I'm happy with it. I'll never use MS Money or Quicken again.

If we want Linux to succeed, we have to acknowledge that there is room for proprietary software. (Linus has the right idea - leave it up to the users to decide what they want to use it for). If you don't like proprietary software, don't use it. But Free Software is about Freedom. Kind of like the Freedom to run whatever programs you want. If GNUcash is a better program than Moneydance, then Moneydance will die, without any assistance from the zealots. If, OTOH, Moneydance fills another niche, then both will survive.

Like it or not, software like this is vital to getting Linux on the desktop. If people want to pay, let them pay. But let them decide which they like better - don't presume to dictate their software choice to them. GNUcash takes effort to set up, especially on some MacOS X and Windows. Sure, it's not a _LOT_ of effort, but it's more than the standard "double click install.exe" that folks are used to.

I'm getting tired of seeing responses to every non-free Linux program mentioned on /. along the lines of "Boo, it's proprietary, use $bar instead". If you know of and use a better, l33ter program to accomplish the same task, then maybe, just maybe, you're not the intended audience of the new piece of software. In that case, don't use it. But why disparage it in front of potential users? Sure, there are some things to be worried about. Like when MS releases Office and Windows Media Player for Linux, I'll start to get nervous, and recommened OpenOffice and Mplayer instead. But when a company comes along with a good product, and sells it for a reasonable price, don't bitch just for the sake of bitching.

Lastly, let's not forget the goal of this program. A drop in replacement for Quicken, available for Linux, OS X, and Windows. The last platform is perhaps the MOST important. The installation on Windows is as easy as any other Windows program. And it reads QIF files. And it has most Quicken features. But it's not Quicken. And this is excellent. Because guess who makes Quicken? Our good friends at Intuit, makers of the wonderful TurboTax with activiation that we were all bitching about a while back. If Intuit can lose some market share because of this program, it's still a good thing. Because it's taking people away from a company that treats their customers like criminals.

Re:Moneydance

[gosand]

I dont believe the article said ANYWHERE it was free. Because it will run on Linux, you assume it is? You know,, Linux will never become the de-facto OS if people are not willing to PAY for developers to make software for it.

Who ever said they wanted Linux to become the de-facto OS?

I know I sure as hell don't. I just want to use it, and not have anyone try to prevent me from using it.

Re:Moneydance

[rppp01]

I have been using a copy of Quicken Trial for a few years now (had to hack it to make it not expire) on my windows system. It works well enough. But I would love to obtain an open source solution that is free both as beer and speech. GNUCash does not appear to have a windows port, that I can see. So, no, it doesn't run on all platforms listed.

I am not big on running hacked software, but I cannot afford anything any other way. The last time I purchased software, BeOS and Gobe Pro 2, the company folded and I was left with abandon-ware. Since I won't go back to that or to the sluggish GUI experience of Linux for my home box (I use RH here at work), I use windows- and would love Open Source solutions for the OS- and please don't hammer me for using windows. My kids have games, and I have games, and frankly, when at home, I don't want to f*ck with media formats, wine or all the other software headaches that I've had to fight through in the past. At work, fine. Home... I just want it to work- and yes if I had the $$, I'd have that Mac I dream of.

Re:Moneydance

[Narcissus]

Wow. You've been using a hacked financial management application for "a few years now" and still haven't been able to work out how to save enough cash to "afford anything any other way".

Assuming you live in America, the product costs $70 for the Premier SKU. You mean to tell me that this program, which has features to save you money, hasn't been able to save you the $1.95 per month for the last few years to be able to buy it?

Something doesn't seem quite right with what you're telling us...

Oh, and just out of curiousity: are those games you and your kids have pirated, too?

Re:Moneydance

[rppp01]

Excellent points. No, they are not. And this software is the only pirated software that I own. My goal was always to migrate back to linux and use something like GNUCash. And trust me, you go through what I've gone through, with the IT economy, divorce and such, and yes, I have not been able to save anything for a few years. The games are older, and yes, I do enjoy using something that has helped me eat when I had no income. To assume that I am simply pirating to pirate is to assume incorrectly. Your assumption has made an Ass of U and Me.

Once upon a time, I did pirate. Now? The OSS movement has made this become an almost non-issue, and thank Whom-Ever-You-Want it has.

Re:Moneydance

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont believe the article said ANYWHERE it was free.

I don't think that was the point he was trying to make. He was pointing out a downside to the application that an alternative does not have.

Because it will run on Linux, you assume it is? You know,, Linux will never become the de-facto OS if people are not willing to PAY for developers to make software for it.

Way to go. You've not only completely misrepresented what the other person is saying, you are also blaming him for Linux not being successful. Who's the zealot now?

Re:Moneydance

[Anonymous Coward]

If we want Linux to succeed, we have to acknowledge that there is room for proprietary software.

Most people do. Pointing out Free alternatives to closed-source applications isn't a crime though.

If you know of and use a better, l33ter program to accomplish the same task, then maybe, just maybe, you're not the intended audience of the new piece of software.

What kind of backwards reasoning is that? "You use a better application, therefore the better application is not actually better for other people"?

But when a company comes along with a good product, and sells it for a reasonable price, don't bitch just for the sake of bitching.

Pointing out a Free alternative is not bitching. A commercial product has to justify its price; they shouldn't expect a free ride just because they are competing with established products, especially if there is comparable Free software.

Lastly, let's not forget the goal of this program. A drop in replacement for Quicken, available for Linux, OS X, and Windows. The last platform is perhaps the MOST important. The installation on Windows is as easy as any other Windows program.

So, the thing that set you off on this rant is basically because somebody pointed out a Free alternative to a commercial product, that you don't like the installation procedure of, and operates in the same market as a company you don't like?

Re:Moneydance

[Zathras11]

jdreed1023 said:
"If Intuit can lose some market share because of this program, it's still a good thing. Because it's taking people away from a company that treats their customers like criminals."

As does Micro$oft! And yes, I still use Windows,
but its 98se as I won't upgrade past 2000 (bought
but not installed yet) since starting with XP they
want me to ask them for permission to makes changes
to my own system! Screw them and screw Intuit
(writing to the MBR was the end for them with me)!

Re:Moneydance

[verch]

True, but this is slashdot. Its barely news if it is free, but if it isn't free this is just an advertisement. Why is a random commercial application getting released news?

Re:Moneydance

[The Breeze]

Free != good.
GNUCash is a wonderful program to use, IF you can get it running. Unfortunately, installing it, due to RPM dependancy hell, is a nightmare - I don't know if it still says this, but their website used to say "Unless version 1.6 came with your distribution, it's most likely better to use 1.4 since there's so many dependancies."

I'm willing to pay the $40 or whatever Moneydance costs in return for a program that actually works. GNUcash worked great for me, for awhile, but they keep coming out with new features, features that sound wonderful, but that require me to spend HOURS trying to tweak everything to get the newer version to work until I gave up. And, by the time I give up, I can't get the older version to work anymore. I suppose if I slipped into hacker mode I could get it to work if I played with it long enough, but I just don't have time.

Re:Moneydance

[ChannelX]

Your rationalizing why you're using pirated software is amusing. The particulars of your situation really are irrelevant. Did you steal your car too because of divorce and the IT economy? At least have the balls to say you use pirated software because you don't want to pay for it vs. the sob story. The low-end Quicken is $50. I find it hard to believe that in several years you couldn't save $50 for something that is apparently vital to your life.

Re:Moneydance

[Anonymous Coward]

does gnu cash run on windows?

Re:Moneydance

[Jon_H]

I just want it to work- and yes if I had the $$, I'd have that Mac I dream of.
Second hand macs are cheap, ever thought of buying one ? And no people, I'm not trying to sell one to him

Re:Moneydance

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of backwards reasoning is that? "You use a better application, therefore the better application is not actually better for other people"?

Learn to read. He said "l33ter" not "better". They are not the same. In fact, they are mutually exclusive. The problem with you fat linux dorks is that you think l33t = good. It doesn't, at least, not in the real world where people actually have sex outside of the movies and internet sites.

Re:Moneydance

[milkman_matt]

Why is a random commercial application getting released news?

I can't find where I saw it.. but I read a while back about slashdot inserting a story a day into the main page which is basically an advertisment wrapped up in a story (that's probably what this is)

-matt

Re:Moneydance

[tfreport]

However, if you read the write up at the top of the page and what the moderator said ("from the free-money-programs-but-no-free-money dept.") then you would get the idea that it was free.

Not to mention that if you read the article it never gives a price. In fact, it states "I filled out the information on their free download link and that took me to the instruction page." It was not until I read the comments of the review that I first learned it was not a free product. I can easily forgive this person for not realizing it - the editors of Slashdot made it seem like it was a free Linux product. I know that is what I understood until I read the fine print of the article.

Re:Moneydance

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to read. He said "l33ter" not "better".

Learn to read? Let me quote him again:

If you know of and use a better, l33ter program

Fool.

The problem with you fat linux dorks

Way to over-generalise. Who said I was fat, dorky, or a fan of Linux? Projection?

Re:Moneydance

[nelsonal]

It always seemed to me like second had Macs generally carried more of a premium to their PC equivelents, than when they were new. Like a BMW or Honda one of the reasons to pay up for a Mac was that you could get quite a bit more for it on the used market if you wanted to sell it. Perhaps my searching is a bit narrow, but a year or two ago, a plain iMac was selling for more than $300, while a nice PC workstation, was only $100 and white box stuff you could hardly give away.

Re:Moneydance

[bluepinstripe]

Lastly, let's not forget the goal of this program. A drop in replacement for Quicken, available for Linux, OS X, and Windows. The last platform is perhaps the MOST important.

I could not disagree more with this statement (even though it is "perhaps"): that Windows is perhaps the most important platform. Unless all you want to do is take market share away from Intuit, which is what it sounds like, the most important platform is not one platform but all three platforms.

Gnucash is just fine

[Renegade Lisp]

A user's comment on this review at madpenguin.org states the obvious: What about GnuCash? It turns out that GnuCash is very comparable to this product in terms of features, and for somebody who'd rather stick with free software, there should be no rational need to buy MoneyDance.

I've been using GnuCash for my personal accounting for a year and a half now, and I must say that it's absolutely enough for all that I need (I'm a freelance consultant), and lots of interesting new features are on the horizon.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Angry White Guy]

Gnucash is a good program, but you better know how to use your ldd command to get the bastard installed. It relies on so many libraries that a newbie would get fed up with it and run quicken.

Great program when running, but horrible to get it there.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Renegade Lisp]

Gnucash is a good program, but you better know how to use your ldd command to get the bastard installed. It relies on so many libraries that a newbie would get fed up with it and run quicken.

I've been using the version that comes with Debian unstable since day one, and I've never had the slightest problems. Yes, the GnuCash homepage has a few scary remarks about its tangled dependencies, but the Debian guys did a great job to make this as smooth as for any other software.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Angry White Guy]

Yeah, but face it, Debian should be the last flavor that would complain about dependancies.

I installed on slackware, compiled from source, found out what was missing from the configure script, compiled that from source, installed Gnome 1.4, re-installed Gnome 2, configured gnucash, compiled, then renamed some libraries, ldconfig'd and was running GnuCash just in time to switch over to KDE 3.1, where I'm looking for a good native money manager.

Maybe by the time I find one or write one, I'll have money to manage :)

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[xiaix]

I remember those days. However the install has gotten much easier (at least for the lazy.) The Red Hat RPM installs fine through up2date, and the gentoo install also works without a hitch. Not a single dependency / library problem, although if you want to use the stock updates you may need to add some things via cpan.

I used to dual boot solely for Quicken, but that stopped years ago when they made internet explorer an integrated part of their product. I have been using Gnucash since, and with the new features in the 1.8 releases scheduled payments and billing customers for my home based business is easier than ever.

Still plan to check out the new moneydance when time (and server load) permits...

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Copperhead]

Hmmm...

> emerge gnucash

Gotta love Gentoo ;-)

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[pongo000]

Imagine a world where all those people who would otherwise shell out $30 for MoneyDance would be willing to donate half of that to support "free" comparable software such as Gnucash.

Just imagine.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if you weren't so busy fucking around with hackware you'd have time to earn some money. The funniest thing about your post is that you seem to already be aware that debian would solve these problems for you.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, if you prefer...

> apt-get install gnucash

Debian ain't no slouch, either.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Angry White Guy]

Yeah, Debian would solve one problem, it wouldn't solve them all. And I don't consider it fucking around. I learned more about how my system operates in that one episode than I did in months of fucking around.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Urkki]

But how do you do this in RedHat? 'cos every now and then I'd need to get that one package on a random redhat machine somewhere, but never had the time nor motivation to learn how it's done (from command line).

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried GnuCash a couple months ago. If you want to balance your checkbook and maybe have a saving account and credit card (that covers 95% of desktop linux users!), it looked fine. For anything more complicated than that (like IRAs, 401ks, stock options, DRIPs, annuities, etc), the support isn't there.

Additionally, there wasn't any way to see reports and graphs of where your money is going. Knowing how much money you have is nice, but knowing how you're spending it every month is nicer.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Renegade Lisp]

Additionally, there wasn't any way to see reports and graphs of where your money is going. Knowing how much money you have is nice, but knowing how you're spending it every month is nicer.

Not sure what you mean by that. I'm using bar graphs and pie charts of where my money is going all the time. Recent versions of GnuCash also have cash flow reporting.

Besides, I hear from a lot of people who start using it for billing and taxes, which definitely means a shift toward small to medium businesses. And the guys who develop it are quite ambitious and have lots of ideas for more advanced features.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Corporate Gadfly]

Gnucash is a good program, but you better know how to use your ldd command to get the bastard installed. It relies on so many libraries that a newbie would get fed up with it and run quicken.

Great program when running, but horrible to get it there.

Hmmm... Maybe its time for you to try a new Linux distribution. Or you can continue to suffer if you prefer. As some others have pointed out:

In Gentoo:

emerge gnucash

In Debian:

apt-get install gnucash

Furthermore, in Gentoo (and possibly in Debian as well), you can also see what are the missing dependendencies which will be installed.

emerge -p gnucash

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild N ] gnome-base/libghttp-1.0.9-r3
[ebuild N ] dev-libs/slib-2.4.3
[ebuild N ] dev-libs/g-wrap-1.3.4
[ebuild N ] gnome-extra/gal-0.24
[ebuild N ] gnome-extra/guppi-0.40.3-r2
[ebuild N ] gnome-extra/gtkhtml-1.1.10
[ebuild N ] dev-lang/swig-1.3.16
[ebuild U ] dev-util/guile-1.4-r3 [1.4.1]
[ebuild N ] app-office/gnucash-1.8.2

All done!!!

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[pmz]

Great program when running, but horrible to get it there.

All the other responses to this post say "just use apt-get" or "up2date" or "emerge this or that". That's all nice and dandy, but part of the freedom of Open Source is being able to compile from the source from the authors! Getting GNUCash to compile on Solaris, for example, is absolute torture. I don't want to know how much pain and suffering the people at Debian, Red Hat, and Gentoo had to go through to make their one-shot commands actually work.

IMO, the fact that GNUCash is so difficult to compile from source reflects badly upon its architecture and packaging. However, I do agree that it works well once it's in place.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[pmz]

Imagine a world where all those people who would otherwise shell out $30 for MoneyDance would be willing to donate half of that to support "free" comparable software such as Gnucash.

Would you be willing to appoint yourself the dictator that makes this happen? Perhaps, then, we can really see what Free software can do!

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[laymusic]

I haven't tried the complicated accounts -- I've been using it for the checking account of an organization for which I'm treasurer.

What I mainly wanted is the pie charts that show where the money is coming from an going to, to bring to board meetings.

I agree with other posters that installation is pretty simple on a distribution that manages dependencies (I use debian apt-get). But I still needed help to see the simplest of reports, and the help came in the form of workarounds for bugs in the libraries that are used to create the reports.

So printing out the reports for the board meeting isn't just a push a button and get the pie charts process. The workaround causes me to lose the headers, so I have to save the graphs and include them in a TeX file that has the headers.

So yes, gnucash is a good program, and I like its double entry bookkeeping philosophy, but I don't think it fills the niche of Quicken yet.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[sreilly]

I'm imagining it... It would mean that the GnuCash people would be making barely enough money to pay for their network connection and server costs. Desktop Linux applications aren't making anyone rich... just ask Ximian, or that game porting company that just went out of business (I forget the name).

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[carlos_benj]

But how do you do this in RedHat?

And the silence is just deafening.....

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

emerge quicken

Don't blame individual applications for shortcomings in your distro package management.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Angry White Guy]

installpkg works just fine for binaries for me. But if I want to remove a lot of the cruft from my machine, GnuCash just won't work. It is a spaghetti install of old libraries, most of which I don't want on my system.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Deacon Jones]

Perhaps it is for linux users.

For windows users, it isn't.

Have you tried M$ Money (pun intended) or Quicken lately? Eye candy galore, wizards out the yin-yang (including online reconciliation/bill pay with tons of banks), plenty of stuff for someone who doesn't know anything about finances, much less operating systems.

Screenshots alone can tell this story.

I'm not saying that gnucash doesn't get the minimum accomplished, or that MoneyDance isn't a good product--I wouldn't know. But I seriously doubt it will make much of a difference to those who already use recent versions of the two Bigguns.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

wget http://www.gnucash.org/pub/gnucash/redhat-8.x/RPMS /gnucash-1.8.2-1.RH8.0.i386.rpm
wget http://www.gnucash.org/pub/gnucash/redhat-8.x/RPMS /gnucash-devel-1.8.2-1.RH8.0.i386.rpm
wget http://www.gnucash.org/pub/gnucash/redhat-8.x/RPMS /gnucash-hbci-1.8.2-1.RH8.0.i386.rpm
wget http://www.gnucash.org/pub/gnucash/redhat-8.x/RPMS /gnucash-ofx-1.8.2-1.RH8.0.i386.rpm

sudo rpm -ivh gnucash*

pray.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[jmauro]

Get yum from http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/ and type.

yum install gnucash

It'll fetch everything for you.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

All the other responses to this post say "just use apt-get" or "up2date" or "emerge this or that". That's all nice and dandy, but part of the freedom of Open Source is being able to compile from the source from the authors!

You still have the freedom to do that, but you can't say "it's inconvenient to install" and then say "well, it isn't, I just chose to do it the hard way".

I don't want to know how much pain and suffering the people at Debian, Red Hat, and Gentoo had to go through to make their one-shot commands actually work.

I just took a look at the ebuild for gnucash. It's just about as simple as an ebuild gets.

IMO, the fact that GNUCash is so difficult to compile from source reflects badly upon its architecture and packaging.

Actually, people complain about installing it because it has lots of dependencies. As such, it is a reasonable assumption that, where an existing library did the work, they re-used the code rather than reinvent the wheel. As such, it's an indicator of high code quality, you have it backwards.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[pmz]

As such, it's an indicator of high code quality, you have it backwards.

No. For example, one dependency, g-wrap, is highly volatile across versions and should be bundled into GnuCash at a minimum. If they are going to choose such libraries as a part of the GnuCash architecture, then, at least, they should do it wisely. Also, I remember there being direct dependencies on GNOME 1.4's configuration utilities built into their autoconf scheme. Without a lot of hacking, it isn't even possible to attempt getting GnuCash to compile for GNOME 2 or KDE.

Libraries and external tools are always a mixed blessing, and GnuCash made sure to excersize this fact to its fullest.

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

cd /usr/ports/deskutils/gnucash ; sudo make install

Screw linux. ;-) (And I say that as someone who's used it since 1993, SLS 1.01 bay-bee!)

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

No. For example, one dependency, g-wrap, is highly volatile across versions and should be bundled into GnuCash at a minimum.

Most libraries are volatile, at least across major versions (which can easily coexist). If you are saying that it's volatile across minor versions, then the library is junk and should never have been considered. But bundling is just plain stupid.

Also, I remember there being direct dependencies on GNOME 1.4's configuration utilities built into their autoconf scheme.

So it's a GNOME 1.4 application. Nothing special there.

Without a lot of hacking, it isn't even possible to attempt getting GnuCash to compile for GNOME 2 or KDE.

Erm... what? How on earth do you propose compiling a GNOME 1.4 application "for" KDE? Do you even know what you are talking about?

Re:Gnucash is just fine

[pmz]

If you are saying that it's volatile across minor versions, then the library is junk and should never have been considered.

It is highly volatile across minor versions. I tried three different 1.X distributions before one had the right directory structure for GNUCash.

How on earth do you propose compiling a GNOME 1.4 application "for" KDE?

I really didn't intend to mean compiling GNUCash in the presence of just a KDE installation. Often, getting GNOME apps to work under KDE or CDE is a matter of having the right libraries. GNUCash, however, has dependencies on the much of the GNOME 1.4 distribution, including utilities under its "bin" directory.

Karma Whore I am, I am...

[BluGuy]

Article Text: MadPenguin does the tango with MoneyDance 2003 (Posted on Tuesday, April 22 @ 22:12:13 EDT ) For those of you who may not have heard, MoneyDance 2003 was released on March 28th, 2003 for general public consumption. It is available for Linux, Mac OSX, and also Windows. Geared toward current Intuit Quicken and Microsoft Money users, MoneyDance 2003 is packed full of features. This is more than a software release to the Linux world. It is a step forward. Until now, Linux had a fairly large hole which was void of proper personal finance software (aside from the obvious gnucash), but MoneyDance seems to be on the right track to bridging that gap. At one time, when the software was dropped by the company that owned it, the outlook appeared bleak... but since it's been given new life by it's original developer, Reilly Technologies, MoneyDance appears to have a bright future. On to the review... by MadJudu: When asked if I was interested in reviewing MoneyDance 2003, I jumped at the opportunity. As a long-time Windows user and Computer Applications Instructor I have been eagerly awaiting software such as MoneyDance to make my conversion from Windows to Linux complete. It has been a slow process finding quality, sophisticated Linux software that is comparable to their Windows counterparts. Fortunately in banking software I have found a keeper with MoneyDance and am one step closer to making this happen. Below are my observations on this great software. INSTALLATION The installation was quick and easy. I filled out the information on their free download link and that took me to the instruction page. The instructions were simple and few, just the way I like it. This was my first unsupervised Linux install. The only thing I needed an explanation for was the following symbol "%>" which is the Konsole prompt. At first I didn't realize that I wasn't supposed to type that along with the command. IMPORTING QIF FILES I created nine exported QIF files from Quicken, which contained all the info for my accounts. There were three bank, four credit, and two cash accounts. The first time you open MoneyDance the opening screen has three options: Create New File, Open Existing File and Import File. The program already knows that you're importing a QIF file once you click on the Import File button. All the accounts imported easily, however there were a number of duplicate transactions created in the process. The help files noted that this is a possibility and that you may have to "find and remove a duplicate transaction or two." In the case of a year's worth of transactions, it would be more than a few duplicates and wasn't worth the trouble. I ended up not importing the two cash accounts. All the other accounts imported without creating duplicates and with the same balances that were on the original Quicken accounts. As soon as I added the cash accounts, most of the account balances changed with the added duplicate files. I do not believe that this is a problem with MoneyDance as much as it is a problem with the originating software. It would be preferable if QIF files included all the bank accounts in one QIF instead of one QIF for each individual account. With this design it would seem that duplicates are inevitable. This is something to consider when trying to decide whether to transfer your account information to MoneyDance or just start fresh with a brand new file and go from there. As a side note, I noticed that there is also an option to import OFX (Open Financial Exchange) through the Menu Bar if your current banking software does not use QIF. EASE OF USE The program is simple and easy to use. All accounts are shown in your Root Account (Home Page) in a kind of "snapshot" format. It lists each name and account balance. From there you can select an account and go into that register. Whatever account you choose to use, each new transaction is shown as a blank check. You just fill in the appropriate blanks and select Record. There are useful features that are similar to Quicken such as the date shortcu

Re:Karma Whore I am, I am...

[sould]

Yup. Thanks for that.

The article text is really helpful without screenshots.

Thanks for parsing out the carriage returns too...

After all one nice big clean block of text looks much neater hey?

Moderators - give the parent plenty of points for this

This is a good thing

[nberardi]

This is a good thing because now I can put off balancing my check book virtually too.

So who is up?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article also mentions that this thing is worth$30, or that you have to pay $30 for it.
So let it begin.
It's a linux, mac, BSD app for sale. Good for them, I hope they make money off of it.

mad whaoo ?

[KingRamsis]

toasted madpenguin :-))

Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 28 Warning: Access denied for user: 'apache@localhost' (Using password: NO) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32 Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Access denied for user: 'apache@localhost' (Using password: NO) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32 Warning: MySQL: A link to the server could not be established in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 32 Unable to select database

Re:mad whaoo ?

[WPIDalamar]

But the thing to notice:

apache@localhost' (Using password: NO)

All the evil crackers out there are plotting already... passwordless sql.

Re:mad whaoo ?

[ClippyHater]

I saw that, too, and am hoping that the user without the password only has read-only rights for the db and nothing else. Of course, then you're relying completely on the dbms's security mechanism--better to give a password in addition to read-only rights. But hey, it's refreshing to find someone who truly believes in their backend's security nowadays :)

Re:mad whaoo ?

[Anonymous Coward]

They could be using only unix sockets and have tcp turned off.

MoneyDance2003

[WesG]

I guess the secret to saving money is not paying extra for bandwidth and database connections :-)

Quicken for Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a Quicken for Mac. I use it. It's right here. Really. I will resist swearing at you and calling you names because it's Friday.

Re:Quicken for Mac

[REBloomfield]

let me guess. you're american. There is no English version.

Re:Quicken for Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should the Quicken people waste their valuable time on a third world shit hole of a market?

Besides, you should be spending that money on toothpaste and a toothbrush instead.

conrad on gnucash

[Renegade Lisp]

More interesting than the review itself, here is conrad's comment from madpenguin.org (I'm including it below because the server is already slashdotted):

For those of you who would be prepared to pay money for Moneydance, can I recommend that you look at Gnucash and save your money. MadJudu waves his hand at Gnucash and dismisses it, and then goes on to praise MoneyDance for now doing what Gnucash has mostly been able to do for several years.

The Gnucash interface mightn't have the "lean and mean" look that MadJudu favours, but it is fairly simple and after a small amount of aclimatization (it is very different from quicken), you will (in my opinion) find it far more useful.

Gnucash does most of the other things MoneyDance does, plus a few extras. Gnucash can interface with HBCI (the German online computer banking standard). Gnucash doesn't have the budgeting features (yet), but does have simple Accounts Payable/Accounts Receivable functionality for people with slightly more complicated accounting requirements.

Most of the complaints and comments MadJudu makes about MoneyDance also apply to Gnucash. In fact, I almost wondered if MadJudu was reviewing Gnucash at times.

So, whats the biggest selling point for Gnucash over MoneyDance? Price! Why spend US$30, when the Gnucash developers charge you the princely sum of NOTHING in whatever currency you prefer. Same low price, always!

The biggest disadvantage (for those so afflicted) is that Gnucash does not run on any Microsoft OS. Linux, MacOS-X, and FreeBSD are available. Probably others too.

Get Gnucash from your favourite Linux distribution (its packaged by all major distributions), or visit http://www.gnucash.org/ for more details.

Re:conrad on gnucash

[tdvaughan]

I agree - GNUCash has been great for my fairly basic needs (once I got it installed that is - that really epitomised dependency hell for me and I still haven't installed Finance::Check properly). Since I'd never used a personal accounting package before the biggest hurdle was getting to grips with the concepts of double entry accounting. That was a really useful skill for me to pick up. And it isn't entirely bug-free (some of the reporting functions didn't work properly but in day-to-day use it's been fine) but the devs were always helpful on their IRC channel, even with questions I realised were stupid afterwards.

Re:conrad on gnucash

[Anonymous Coward]

More interesting than the review itself, here is conrad's comment from madpenguin.org (I'm including it below because the server is already slashdotted):

For those of you who would be prepared to pay money for Moneydance, can I recommend that you look at Gnucash and save your money. MadJudu waves his hand at Gnucash and dismisses it, and then goes on to praise MoneyDance for now doing what Gnucash has mostly been able to do for several years.

Mostly been able to do? That doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endoresement to me. "Mostly been able to do" means "not able to do" or "really sucks at".

Disclaimer: I have never used Gnucash nor Money Dance.

Re:conrad on gnucash

[Anonymous Coward]

I am glad that it works with HBCI but I do not live in Germany. Will it work with Bank Of America's system?
I have never heard such bitching and whinning in my life over a $30 program. Free software is great but people have a right to make money from there work also. There is nothing wrong with paying for your software.

Re:conrad on gnucash

[Radical Rad]

I don't mind spending $30 for something truly useful and to encourage commercial development on the OS I need apps for. Since you speak as though you are knowledgeable of both programs let me ask you, can either one handle taxes? I am fed up with having to load ms windows on a machine every year so I can run turbotax. If gnucash and moneydance can't do taxes do you know of any linux programs that can?

Delete protection

[mccalli]

From the review: Deleting a transaction is quick and painless by selecting the transaction you want to delete and pressing the Delete Button. And as an added delight it doesn't ask you the obnoxious question "Are you sure?"

But these are my accounts! I want to be protected against accidently deleting things. To take a random example, suppose I think I've clicked into a text field to start typing, whereas what I've really done is just highlighted the whole transation. I press delete and...

Oops. Hope I still have the bank statements for that one. I'll enjoy tracking the discrepency down, I'm sure...

Sometimes, it's good to have confirmation required before performing a destructive task. Imagine a similar review saying "And better still, no pesky usage screen or prompt - just typing the command name instantly low-level formats your SCSI RAID array...".

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Delete protection

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps you are unfamiliar with magic undo technology? dunno if that's in there, but..

Re:Delete protection

[BiAthlon]

Rather than keep me from doing something how about having a robust undo function.

You just deleted a transaction. Oops, didn't mean to do that. Undo. Viola! Everything is back the way it was and no stupid "Are you really sure you want to do what you just said you wanted to do" prompts.

Re:Delete protection

[Anonymous Coward]

And then go to jail for falsification of accounts (oh, I didn't like that, I'll just do away with it...)

Re:Delete protection

[pboulang]

Oops, hit delete by mistake and didn't notice... hell, maybe even the cat jumped up on the keyboard. While a robust undo is greatly encouraged, it doesn't necessarily replace that prompt. This is critical to having a product that will be appropriate for the mass market.

Wouldn't it make the best sense to set the behavior of the "stupid prompt" in a preference?

wait a minute!

[Joe the Lesser]

The money dance looks a bit too similar to the hokey-pokey!

Re:wait a minute!

[macrom]

True, but if you master the program, you can become the Lord of the MoneyDance! Flowing pirate vest optional.

MonkeyDance?

[quebeck]

Did anyone else read this as "MonkeyDance 2003" and think it was some Steve Ballmer rave event?

Re:MonkeyDance?

[Shadestalker]

It was the best of times, it was the... blurst of times?!?! Stupid accounting software!!

Page formatter you're not you're not....

[REBloomfield]

:) lol

Re:Page formatter you're not you're not....

[BluGuy]

Yeah, I realized after I submitted that it looked like Hell. Sorry about that.

Warning -

[vasqzr]

This site is NOTHING like Hampster Dance!!

Re:Warning -

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're on the wrong story here, as this is definitely much closer to art than ZOMBOCOM.

Re:Warning -

[Enry]

Where's the "duck hunt" option for that web site?

Re:Warning -

[peterprior]

I'm not sure whats more amusing...

The hamster dance, or the fact they actually bothered to register hamsterdance2.com and make an "even better" hamsterdance.

I'm already itching for hamsterdance3...

Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to read it a couple of times to make sure it wasn't an Ximian product!

Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Rinikusu]

Maybe they don't like the /. referral tags?

Again for all the "free software people" and the million and one "JUST USE GNUCASH!" folks, here is something for you:

Free software may be fine and dandy, but some of us don't actually mind *paying* for software if said software does the job well. Shocking, isn't it? Free is not the end all, all encompassing criteria for a great majority of computer users out there. I know, you're trying to change that, but face it: Commercial software is not inherently evil, Proprietary software is not evil, RMS be damned.

Here's something to ponder: With OpenSource software, I get the source and I can tweak the software any which way I want! Yay! So, after I spend a few weeks poking my way around the source code and finally figuring out where and how to make the changes I need, I could've just gone down to BestBuy and bought another copy of Money or Quicken and have been done with it. What I'm buying is *convenience*. Ever notice that the QuickEMart on the corner sells stuff at quite a premium over the grocery store down the street? Convenience. Sometimes convenience costs money, and I'm willing to pay the "tax" to get something now, not 3 weeks from now.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see if I got this straight.

You have two packages, and they are equialent in the utility for you (some bits you don't like in one, you like in the other, and vice-versa).

One is Free, on costs money.

You will prefer the one that costs.

Why?

(Note: I'm not against PAYING for software, but why does that make "USE GNU/CASH" a silly option?)

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[sultanoslack]

Sadly you've missed the point of Free Software.

• Free Software isn't software that you don't pay for. You must be new here.
• Let's say you want to integrate i.e. Quicken / GnuCash into your business. There are features in there that are valuable to you and not available in any package (i.e. things specific to your workflow). Sure, you might have to pay one of the local geeks [EUR/$]1000 to hack that feature in, but you can't do that for any price with most proprietary software.
• See point one again. If you want stuff from Free Software, you might have to pay for it. But I assure you that people exist that will cater to your whims for a price. :-)

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Renegade Lisp]

Free software may be fine and dandy, but some of us don't actually mind *paying* for software if said software does the job well.

I would be more than happy to pay the GnuCash developers if there was a common mechanism by which free software developers could be rewarded. (And yes, I'm donating money to one or another free software project occasionally already.)

As the saying goes: this is about freedom, not price. MoneyDance ties you to this particular company; you are at their mercy if you need enhancements to the product, or whatever. With free software, you, or anyone you chose to hire for the job, can make whatever enhancements you need. That's the promise of the free software model, and I'm definitely prepared to pay for something like that.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Anonymous Coward]

so it is true. americans are fat and lazy, unable to do anything for themselves. i thought this was just a stereotype, but hey, you've gone and proven it.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Zigg]

So, after I spend a few weeks poking my way around the source code and finally figuring out where and how to make the changes I need, I could've just gone down to BestBuy and bought another copy of Money or Quicken and have been done with it. What I'm buying is *convenience*.

Of course you are, but you are assuming that you absolutely will be able to buy the feature you want by swinging on down to the store and buying your copy of whatever. Simply because you're in the store waving your credit card around doesn't make the feature you want magically appear.

You see, if the vendor doesn't think the feature you want is worth implementing, it won't get implemented; proprietary software developers are generally paranoid about giving you the means to implement it or pay someone else to implement it.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Rinikusu]

I generally don't reply to stuff like this, but take a gander at my user ID. I'm definately not new here.

Second, Just because Free Software can be charged for, just about every post here criticizing MoneyDance will be based on "It's not Free (in beer)" and "it's java! Java sux0r5!". I chose to provide an alternative viewpoint to the first (and let someone else handle the java part).

Third, I'm a desktop user. If I were running a business, GnuCash may or may not meet my needs. Can you tell the IRS to hang on for awhile while your team of crack programmers code in the features you need to do your taxes? Or tell your customers that "We're currently implementing new features in our Accounting software, sorry, come back later!"

I assure you, I'm quite aware that there are people that cater to my whims for a price. Microsoft, Intuit, Sun, Apple...

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[$rtbl_this]

I can't help but get the feeling that you're confusing the ability to modify the source code with some kind of necessity to do so. Most of the open source software I use does what I want without me having to change a single line of code, as does most of the equivalent closed source. The difference is that if a program doesn't do something I want and it's open source I can do something more constructive about it than submit feature requests, wait and hope not to get fobbed off.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[IamTheRealMike]

Free software may be fine and dandy, but some of us don't actually mind *paying* for software if said software does the job well. Shocking, isn't it?

I feel you should read the writings of Stallman, in particular the article about the early days of the GNU project. In particular, I'd note that Stallman made a living for many years by selling tapes with emacs on for $150 - it's free software, but people paid for it.

The issue of free software has very little to do with "cheapness", and everything to do with long term benefits for all.

I know, you're trying to change that, but face it: Commercial software is not inherently evil, Proprietary software is not evil, RMS be damned.

This is a fairly common mistake on Slashdot - stating your position does not make it valid. Stallman has quite eloquently argued that for various social, economic and technical reasons it's better for software to be free than proprietary. He's never said proprietary software is "evil", and apart from some excitable ACs on /. I have yet to see anybody else claim that either.

So, if you want to be taken seriously, you're going to have to:

a) Respond to Stallmans arguments.
b) Provide some of your own showing that proprietary software is a good thing.

Quick tip about the second one - saying "that's how it's always worked" is not an argument.

Your last paragraph confuses me - it appears to imply that free software is always lacking in features to proprietary software. No matter how much I'm willing to pay, I'm unable to get a version of Internet Explorer that has tabs built in, or that has non-lame JavaScript error reporting without crash-prone extra debuggers, which in fact is currently frustrating my work no end (which is why I'm reading slashdot :). Convenience is an entirely separate issue.

And in fact in this case it appears from some of the comments that GNUcash is significantly more stable and integrated on Linux at any rate than MoneyDance. I don't know enough to compare features.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[whig]

You're pretty new here, relatively speaking, but that's not really important.

The question of whether GnuCash *works* is important. If it doesn't do what you need it to do, you can either choose not to use it, or modify it until it does what you need. Nobody would expect you to make your business rely upon any piece of software before it works the way you need it to.

On the other hand, relying on a proprietary product means that features you want or require depend upon the developer. If it doesn't meet your needs today, you have no way to ensure it ever will. If your needs change over time, you don't have the ability to adapt the software to your new requirements.

Sometimes the best solution may be to use a proprietary product for awhile, while you work on a longer term free software solution. RMS might object, but for a business, you cannot allow ideology to prevent you from using the tools you need right now. But imagining that Microsoft, Intuit, Sun, Apple, etc., will ever "cater to your whims" is to hinge your business on a fantasy.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[jacksonai]

I agree. That's the reason why Lindows made Click & Run, Redhat made rpm, and debian made apt-get

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[mjwise]

You're pretty new here, relatively speaking, but that's not really important.

Why, back when I was young first posts meant somethin'...oh well...anyway...

Sometimes the best solution may be to use a proprietary product for awhile, while you work on a longer term free software solution.

But let's say you pay some geek $1000 to hack GnuCash to do exactly what you need. You've basically branched out a tree for yourself. Now a new GnuCash release comes out that fixes, say, a few critical bugs and has a few spiffy new features you'd love to have, but now you have to merge this new version into your version. There goes $500 to Mr. Consultant Geek again, and so on and so forth. The flexibility of being able to put in new features is quite nice, but it has a pricetag, and you may create a situation where you have to maintain software in-house or have to pay a consultant $$$ for maintenance. Free, perhaps, but still plenty expensive.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[sreilly]

You're pretty new here, relatively speaking, but that's not really important.

You're pretty new here yourself, Mr. 6869. :) Isn't everything relative?

On the other hand, relying on a proprietary product means that features you want or require depend upon the developer. If it doesn't meet your needs today, you have no way to ensure it ever will. If your needs change over time, you don't have the ability to adapt the software to your new requirements.

Although in the case of Moneydance, there's an open API and plugin mechanism that lets you add the features yourself. Apparently the only remaining advantage of GnuCash in this case is that it is free-as-in-beer. Although as the saying goes, for some people, it's only free if your time has no value.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[sheldon]

"but you can't do that for any price with most proprietary software. "

It's called being a VAR. Most proprietary software have partnership agreements that you can enter into to build customized solutions which integrate with their products.

"See point one again. If you want stuff from Free Software, you might have to pay for it. But I assure you that people exist that will cater to your whims for a price. :-) "

The only difference is with the VAR, they can make the custom changes and then spread the cost out across 100 customers, instead of hoping for one rich benefactor who will fund the development and then not mind it's given away for free thereafter.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hiel Stallman!

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[arkane1234]

Europeans are like that too.. hell, most of the world is like that.

Let's run a tangent here, a parallel tangent. lol...
You were given an automatic transmission, in seperate peices, with a book showing what each part depended on. Now, it would take you about 3 weeks to actually figure out how each peice goes together with the next.. and that's just to try it out in your car to see if that's what you want. Now, on the other side, there is a person selling an automatic transmission with installation included in the price, for 500 dollars/US. Which would you jump for? I know myself, I would go for the installation and the transmission package, because 3 weeks is equiv to about +$1500-$2000 of my time, not to mention mental anguish from the stress of learning an automatic tranmsission inside and out before using it.

It's the same deal... try to keep your eyes open, and not call a person lazy because they'd rather trade goods for services. It's a market economy, and it works. Maybe your government should beta test it :)

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[edbarrett]

The flexibility of being able to put in new features is quite nice, but it has a pricetag, and you may create a situation where you have to maintain software in-house or have to pay a consultant $$$ for maintenance. Free, perhaps, but still plenty expensive.

How is this worse than the proprietary software upgrade cycle? You'd be paying your vendor for upgrades anyway. And the whole argument is that Free software doesn't necessarily mean no cost!

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[carlos_benj]

One is Free, on costs money.

You will prefer the one that costs.

Why?

He just told you why. To get the functional equivalent of package A from package B he has to spend three weeks of his own time tweaking the source. His contention is twofold:

1. If I need it now I can't wait for the tweaks.

2. My time is worth something. Three weeks of my free time is worth a lot. Thirty bucks is worth less than three weeks of my free time.

Some of us have other pusuits that we prefer over tweaking somebody elses code. Me? I like photography and go out into the desert to take scenics or portraits of friends and family. I like music (to play it, not just listen to it). I like to be engaged with other people in conversation and fellowship. If I'm fiddling with someone else's code I lose all of that. Thirty bucks seems cheap when you look at it that way.

If I'm wanting to learn something, or just hone my skills and I don't need the functionality right away, I'm willing to play with source (or just tinker with dependencies). Otherwise I have to start weighing my options.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Anonymous Coward]

uh yeah.

I have Quicken on Mac OS X.

I can't print from it. Never could in OS X. Some negative number error that no other program has.

My IRA shows up as $30,000, even though it's only at $7,000 .. somehow, something got messed up. In the account screen, everything is fine, but in every other function, the wrong value is used.

Because of this bug, all my reports and everything are messed up. Not that it matters because I can't print any of them out!

I have some other bugs I've found but these are the big ones. Some of them are cosmetic and I would fix them in 2 seconds if I had the source.

I paid for quicken every year, and this is the thanks I get. As soon as I have time, I'm going to get into GNUcash (my quicken data goes back years).

I report the bugs and NOTHING happens. I email for support and they tell me to please report the bugs. It's frustrating. The program is ported from the old Mac version and is very un-OS X like ... it needs to be re-written but of course why would they do that?

Let me tell anybody reading this right now: DON'T GET LOCKED INTO PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE. Once you're in their clutches it's expensive (in terms of time) to switch. Start with the free versions and stick with them. Software is not like peanuts from the quick-e-mart .. once you base your business or life on a piece of software, you pretty much have to stick with that software unless you've got time on your hands.

A lot of people (this poster included) live in some capitalist utopia where commercial software never has bugs and somehow you get "support", just because you paid for it. Well, unless it's from a big company and is a popular program (popular enough so bugs *have* to be fixed), it has all the same warts as free software. Except you don't get the source code. Sometimes that's okay, but for something like this, I really wish I had never used Quicken and put my data in a spreadsheet instead or something.

See, these are my finances, my life pretty much, and I *don't* want them locked in this "black box" from some company who couldn't care less about my life. Why should Intuit decide if I can or can't print out my financial reports?!!

This is finance software, not Photoshop. Pretty basic. There's really no reason why GNUcash won't exceed Quicken in a few years.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Anonymous Coward]

The beauty of non-Free software is, of course, the LICENSE AGREEMENT! Here's a section from MoneyDance's:

g. Dispute Resolution Process. Should a dispute arise between the parties under or relating to this Agreement, you agree to notify REILLY in writing as promptly as possible of any such dispute, including any dispute as to whether an event of default has occurred, and each party agrees that prior to initiating any formal proceeding against the other (except for the seeking of injunctive relief), the parties will each designate a representative for purposes of resolving this dispute. If the parties' representatives are unable to resolve the dispute within ten (10) business days, either may, upon written notice to the other party, require that the dispute be submitted to more senior representatives within each party (the "Senior Representatives"). The Senior Representatives of each party shall meet as soon as possible to negotiate in good faith to resolve the dispute. If the Senior Representatives are unable to resolve the dispute within ten (10) business days after submission of the dispute to them, or such longer period for resolution as may be mutually agreed in writing by the Senior Representatives, the dispute shall be settled by binding arbitration administered by and under the then-current rules of the American Arbitration Association ("AAA"). The location of any such proceeding shall be New York, New York. Judgment upon any award rendered by the arbitrator may be entered by any court having jurisdiction thereof. Any arbitrator shall be bound by the express terms of this Agreement and shall not change or modify any terms of this Agreement or make any award of damages in excess of that set forth in this Agreement or grant any relief not expressly set forth herein.

I don't care how great the software is, or what a wonderful guy the author is, or how terrible RMS is.

I can't give up my constitutional right to a jury trial for some piss-ant software.

The license also has the general obnoxiousness like you can't give away or sell your copy (what happened to "First sale doctrine") .. but arbitration clauses in a SOFTWARE LICENSE are just too much.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Beowabbit]

On the other hand, relying on a proprietary product means that features you want or require depend upon the developer. If it doesn't meet your needs today, you have no way to ensure it ever will.

Sometimes, even if it does meet your needs today, you have no way to ensure it will in the future. The product could be licensed annually, and the company could take out the feature you depend on in a future release ("most of our customers thought it was too confusing"), or stop supporting your platform, or go under, or get bought out by a competitor who wants to kill the product. Even if the product comes with a permanent license, you might end up forced to upgrade (for instance, if you need to upgrade the hardware platform for other reasons), and still be stuck if the vendor doesn't support the old version. Open Source isn't a panacea for end users, but it does insulate you to some extent from those sorts of risks.

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Rinikusu]

/* But imagining that Microsoft, Intuit, Sun, Apple, etc., will ever "cater to your whims" is to hinge your business on a fantasy. */

WHoops! I made a mistake there. What I meant to say is that those guys have done a good job in anticipating my needs and generally that's all I need. You're right, I severely doubt I could call up Steve or Bill and demand a feature. (Hey, at least I own up to my mistakes.. :) )

Re:Just type in the damn URL, mkay?

[Cro Magnon]

It's not just money. My concern with proprietary software is that it puts you at the vendors mercy. If MoneyDance gets bloated or stops fixing known security problems, you're SOL. And just because they're ok right now doesn't mean they will be next year. I'd have no problem paying a reasonable price for something better than gnucash (which shouldn't be hard), but I have to think twice before depending on a non-open money management program.

Mirrors

[brejc8]

Mirror here.

Dupe-o-rama

[Spunk]

For those of you who may not have heard

Yes, those of us who don't read Slashdot.

Re:Dupe-o-rama

[Anonymous Coward]

And this was already reviewed on April 6th.

Boy, did I read THAT wrong!

[Peale]

I read it as MONKEYDANCE. Here, I was picturing...well...I suppose it's best left to my imagination. I'll let yours do it's own thing.

Re:Boy, did I read THAT wrong!

[pubjames]

I read it as MONKEYDANCE. Here, I was picturing...well...

Steve Ballamer? Funny, I was reading an interview on News.com with Stevie and the came to Slashdot, and I read it as "MonkeyDance" as well.

How well does online banking work?

[astrashe]

How well does this program and GunCash work with online banking systems? I've read that they both do it, but how well does it work in the real world, and how does it compare in terms of ease of use to Quicken or Money?

Re:How well does online banking work?

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

How well does this program and GunCash work with online banking systems?

Just a guess here, but I would expect that GunCash could be very helpful when you want to make large withdrawals, even from banks where you don't have an account.

A couple thoughts...

[Flabby Boohoo]

1) I would like to see the software reveiwed somewhere with some accounting creds (or just some mainstream software creds).

2) I must stop using the word "creds".

3) MoneyDance, IMHO, is not a very professional sounding name. It sounds like shareware.

Re:A couple thoughts...

[molarmass192]

3) MoneyDance, IMHO, is not a very professional sounding name. It sounds like shareware.

... and Quicken always makes me think of the Highlander movies! Well ... at least the first one. You're right though, you'd figure they'd make a play on the word finances for their name, like Finances 2000 or Finances XP! :D

Re:A couple thoughts...

[RobotRunAmok]

3) MoneyDance, IMHO, is not a very professional sounding name. It sounds like shareware.

Compared to what passes as naming conventions in Open Source, MoneyDance sounds positively Redmondian.

It could easily have been called "The gtkFooGnuTklDough" and we'd all be congratulating ourselves on our cleverness.

Re:A couple thoughts...

[RobotRunAmok]

Wait, wait, I can't stop myself:

Open Source Money Program for the Mac: "Apple pyDough"

How about "MING?" ("MoneyDance Is Not GNUCash"?)

A Deluxe Money Program for really, really rich people: "xCESS"

..."TuxBucks?"

Re:MoneyDance on Linux -- Huh?

[MCRocker]

What? It's a Java application. It works the same on both systems. Heck, I've been using MoneyDance for years on OS/2 and find that it works just great. Platform should make no difference at all.

You must be thinking of something else or using a really bad JVM on Linux. Some older linuxen use Kafe as their default JVM and Kafe has lots of bugs. Perhaps that's your problem. Try it with Blackdown's JVM instead.

The article didn't say it...

[radio4fan]

... but it was from the free-money-programs-but-no-free-money dept.

Re:MoneyDance on Linux -- Huh?

[Rinikusu]

IBM and Sun both have nice JVM's for Linux, as well. :)

Perhaps it is you who should ponder

[FreeUser]

Free software may be fine and dandy, but some of us don't actually mind *paying* for software if said software does the job well. [...] What I'm buying is *convenience*.

What you are buying is a hostage situation for your data. What do you do if MoneyDance goes out of business? (No need to belabor all of the underhanded tactics software vendors can and do use to coerce upgrades by holding one's data hostage: MoneyDance isn't Sun Microsystems or Microsoft, but the end user's vulnerability is the same, and non-malicious causes abound in sufficient quantity to make the point.) All that convinience, all that time "saved" gets to now be paid back, with interest, as you laboriously move your data to another format (or even, perhaps, have to reenter it by hand).

I too have been more than willing to pay for good software in the past (I used Quicken at one time, and have paid for Blender, back when it was commercial, as well as various video editing software [much of which, under windows, never worked. Transcode, cinelerra, et. al. may have a learning curve, but they work, and my data will be accessible and usable in perpetuity, until the very bits themselves decay. Under Windows I have data that, three years later, is unavailable because of a changing OS, and discontinued software).

GNUcash is excellent. It is elegantly designed, it works, it does the job, and it's being free insures my financial data will be usable, and accessible, ten, twenty, fifty, even a hundred years from now. Quicken, MoneyDance, et. al. not only cannot guarantee that, but past experience shows that, with them and indeed, with any proprietary software, the data so stored will lose usability in less than half a decade.

If free software really doesn't float your boat, and convinience of the moment outweighs any medium or long term concerns about the accessibility and usability of your data, then go right ahead and cut corners as you so advocate. But at least be honest with yourself as to the real tradeoff you are making, and don't go looking for symphathy when it turns around and bites you.

Re:Perhaps it is you who should ponder

[workindev]

GNUcash is excellent. It is elegantly designed, it works, it does the job, and it's being free insures my financial data will be usable, and accessible, ten, twenty, fifty, even a hundred years from now.

You have to be joking, right? The reality is that GNUcash will probably end up like 90% of the other open soure projects out there. The "developers" will either (a) commence with endless bickering that will eventually cause several splits of the GNUcash project that are all slightly incompatible with each other, or (b) decide that they don't want to work on it any more and leave you with an outdated program. Sure, you have the source code, but who really wants to (or has the ability to) debug a 5 year old software program so it will compile on the new 6.4.1.7.8.10.144.23.6 kernel?

Re:Perhaps it is you who should ponder

[Beowabbit]

I bet 90% of commercial software products don't succeed either. It's the 10% that do that everybody's familiar with, though. The cool thing about open source is that the work done on the 90% of projects that fail is not necessarily wasted; the (perhaps limited) expertise that those projects developed can be borrowed by more successful projects. (I guess some of the same thing happens in the proprietary-software world when Microsoft buys upstart competitors and raids their IP pantries, but the cross-fertilization is a lot easier with Open Source projects.)

There's some advantage to being able to pay a team of developers salaries they can live on, and provide them with offices to work in and testbed platforms and that sort of thing. But there's also some advantage to working in an environment where you can see exactly what your "competitors" are doing and vice versa -- where your competitors essentially become colleagues. I'm not really on top of it, for instance, but I gather there's some degree of open collaboration (in terms of sharing expertise/approaches and supporting interoperability) between KDE and GNOME these days, and a lot of that spills over and makes things easier for smaller projects as well.

Re:Moneydance :: WRONG

[ravenwing_np]

However, GNUCash will run on all the platforms listed

How can you sleep at night when you tell us such lies? No where on the site do I see anything about running on Windows. If you are trying to move people from away from MS software, you have to do it slowly to give them a chance to cope.

Oh, great.

[matt-fu]

Just what we need: a website with animated .gifs of money dancing and annoying music playing in the background. As if the hamsters weren't enough!

I should learn to read...

[csteinle]

Am I the only one who first read this as MonkeyDance?

Real Coup for MoneyDance and users

[MCRocker]

This release is a real coup for MoneyDance's author, Sean Reilly. A while ago, he sold MoneyDance to Apgen. At first this worked out really well because they added a lot of resources to the project and development really took off.

Unfortunately, when Apgen's fortunes started to fade with the end of the .com bubble, the MoneyDance staff was slowly laid off until even Sean was let go.

Like many other zombie probjects, the MoneyDance web page was not taken down and Apgen was still selling it even though nobody was home. There was no support at all. The mailing list was a scary place then. It took months for people to figure out what was going on. Apgen didn't respond at all to help requests and the list turned to a big discussion on what the alternatives were.

Somehow, Sean managed to get the rights to MoneyDance back just a few months ago and started working on the new version that he just released.

Lots of good ideas have sunk in the last year or so of economic trouble in the software industry. Most will never resurface and have been lost forever. This is a real coup for Sean and the MoneyDance users that Sean was able to resurect this fine project and produce a new version in such a short time.

The Apgen folks have been very quiet about the whole thing for obvious reasons, but I think they are an example to follow. They made a valiant effort to promote MoneyDance, but when it didn't work out they set MoneyDance free instead of locking it up and throwing away the key. For some strange reason, this isn't the norm.

Re:Real Coup for MoneyDance and users

[TheMadPenguin]

Both of you guys are absolutely correct. Hats off to Sean Reilly!

Mirror of Text

[ag3n7]

Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/madpenguin.org/httpdocs /mainfile.php on line 28

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Unable to select database

dupe

[alanjstr]

Released on March 28, posted on Slashdot on March 28

Re:dupe

[akadruid]

There is an argument for saying this is not a dupe.
The article concerns the review, not the release of the product.
But then I have an argument for most things...

Is MoneyDance...

[LordYUK]

...Anything like the "Safety Dance"?

Ah we can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind
Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance
Well they're are no friends of mine
I say, we can go where we want to, A place where they will never find
And we can act like we come from out of this world
Leave the real one far behind,
and we can dance

We can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind
Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance
Well they're are no friends of mine
I say, we can go where we want to a place where they will never find
And we can act like we come from out of this world
Leave the real one far behind
and we can dance.

Francois!

Ah we can go when we want to the night is young and so am I
And we can dress real neat from our hats to our feet
and surprise 'em with the victory cry

I Say we can act if want to if we don't nobody will
And you can act real rude and totally removed
And i can act like an imbecile
I say we can dance, we can dance everything out control
We can dance, we can dance we're doing it wall to wall
We can dance, we can dance everybody look at your hands
We can dance, we can dance everybody takin' the chance
Money dance
Oh well the money dance
Ah yes the money dance

Mmmm-Oooo-Nnnn-Eeee-Yyyy
Money-Dance

We can dance if we want to, we've got all your life and mine
As long as we abuse it, never gonna lose it
Everything'll work out right
I say, we can dance if we want to we can leave your friends behind
Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance
Well they're are no friends of mine
I say we can dance, we can dance everything out control
We can dance, we can dance we're doing it wall to wall
We can dance, we can dance everybody look at your hands
We can dance, we can dance everybody's takin' the chance
Oh Well the money dance
ah yes the money dance
Oh well the money dance
Oh well the money dance
Oh yes the money dance
Oh the money dance yeah
Oh it's the money dance
It's the money dance
Well it's the money dance
Oh it's the money dance
Oh it's the money dance
Oh it's the money dance
Oh it's the money dance

GNUcash doesn't run on windows

[scpotter]

However, GNUCash will run on all the platforms listed, and is free. Actually, GNUcash doesn't run on windows, the third 'platform' listed. Unless you're using a more narrow definition of platform than most.

Re:GNUcash doesn't run on windows

[Anonymous Coward]

You can run GNUCash on Windows platforms. You don't really sound you you really want to know how to do it, so I'll just say to ask google.

Re:GNUcash doesn't run on windows

[pmz]

Actually, GNUcash doesn't run on windows, the third 'platform' listed.

True. Actually, it isn't portable beyond systems that have GNOME 1.4 and a plethora of other libraries installed. It's also GTK-based. The huge number of dependencies in GNUCash are its greatest portability weakness, IMO. I doubt it would ever run on Windows without substantial re-engineering.

Re:GNUcash doesn't run on windows

[srvivn21]

Actually, GNUcash doesn't run on windows, the third 'platform' listed.

True. Actually, it isn't portable beyond systems that have GNOME 1.4 and a plethora of other libraries installed. It's also GTK-based. The huge number of dependencies in GNUCash are its greatest portability weakness, IMO. I doubt it would ever run on Windows without substantial re-engineering.

About the GTK base. If I remember correctly the GIMP is also GTK based. And it has been ported to Windows. Not to say that this would make porting GNUCash to Windows possible (I have no idea), just that the GTK dependance is not as big a limitation as you seem to imply...

Re:GNUcash doesn't run on windows

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just GTK. It's also guile, the plugin component stuff and all of the 400 million+ other crap that GNUcash depends on. Just getting anything to compile on Win32 with Cygwin is major pain as you have to constantly patch crap just to get a build. I know, I've tried. Uggh!

Re:MoneyDance on Linux -- Huh?

[Apreche]

The trueness. Even in Mandrake 9 it uses kaffe instead of sun java. You have to install sun java yourself, which is easy enough. But you have to replace the symbolic links in /usr/bin with ones that point to the sun java. When I tried to install jython I realized this.

I'm kind of dissapointed about this MoneyDance program though. It looks like it's really cool and simple. Which is just what I need because I don't do complicated things with my money. But it's a java program, and it isn't free as in beer or speech. If I had extra money to spend on software I wouldn't need a money managing program.

Defacto Misunderstanding

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems cpeterson is another person who missed the memo:

Smart Linux users don't care if it EVER becomes the 'defacto' OS. In fact, intelligent people realize that in order for Linux to become the standard OS, some controlling third party would have to 'steer' it.

If you knew anything about free software, you would realize that it is improbable that any ONE group could CONTROL Linux because anyone is FREE to modify it and release their modified version.

Linux will never be less than it is today, because I can save all the source onto a CD and recompile it anytime I like. So if Linux users are happy with Linux the way it is, then they will always be happy with it. If they are not happy with it, they have the source and can modify it. Get it?

You can go back to rebooting your company's windoze machines now.

Re:Defacto Misunderstanding

[Anonymous Coward]

so if my grandmother isn't happy with linux, she has the source and can modify it? She has a hard time modifying the channel!

Re:Defacto Misunderstanding

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe your grandmother shouldn't be using Linux then, brainiac.

Re:Defacto Misunderstanding

[override11]

See, there are 2 camps of Linux people.

People like yourself, who want a free open source OS, but care very little for the general public. F%#k em, you think, because they dont know about Linux, just let em fry with DRM and big brother breathing down windows update and back doors. Because they dont know linux they are beneath me.

Then there is the second type. These linux users enjoy helping other people out, and introducing them to a wonderful open source operating system. These type of users help others out on message boards, even when they are asked the same newbie question over and over, because they realize that there is a learning curve to a new OS.

Lets try and be a type 2 man, there are a lot of people out there who dont know anything about linux, or dont know enough to actually start USING it for everyday purposes. You flaming the boards just makes them want to stick with windows just to avoid your elitist bullshit attitude.
Grow up.

Re:Defacto Misunderstanding

[dietz]

Because they dont know linux they are beneath me.

Who said anything about that??

Linux isn't for everyone. If they want to use Windows, that's cool with me. I want to use Linux. I hope that's cool with you.

Can't I just like my OS without giving a shit if it becomes the "de facto" OS? My worry is that once Linux becomes useable by the masses, it will cease to be useable by me. If I wanted a consumer UNIX OS that's pretty, I'd use Mac OS X.

But you know what? I don't like Mac OS X. If you do, guess what? That's cool with me.

I am a third type: someone who thinks people should use what OS they want, but doesn't see the point in fucking up the one I like just so other people can like it more.

Re:Defacto Misunderstanding

[Anonymous Coward]

Did his message not get through to you?

Don't use Linux, or any other OS, just because other people use it. That's just an attempt to look cool for using something unique, which is one of the reasons I've found lots of the Linux people I've met to be annoying.

If the masses start using Linux, then that means it got to the point where it's easy to use for non-technical people. And that certainly would be a great thing as long as it's free. Plus, you'll still have old distros if you, for some reason, must have a challenge.

Re:Defacto Misunderstanding

[MarkusQ]

The point is, some of us like it things to work in a way that suits us, and fear (with some justification) that attempts to make it work "for the masses" will break that. There are other OS that are already targeting the masses. Why should we compeat with them? What does it profit a linux user to win the mass market but lose his OS?

The odd thing is that the people who seem so gung ho to bring linux to the masses are always calling the ones who just want to have it work the way they want it to work "zealots" and "snobs." This is backwards. They think they know what OS is best for everyone else; they are the snobs. They want to beat every other OS just to win; they are the zealots.

-- MarkusQ

P.S. I personally expect that linux will eventually be the most frequentky used desktop OS, but only because the people who use it are constantly striving to make it better for themselves. Attempts to make it better for other people (especially vaguely defined demographics) will only slow down the spread.

Re:Defacto Misunderstanding

[morleron]

Your P.S. makes a very good point. Linux has improved greatly as people have contributed changes and built applications to make it work better for them. There are people (mostly so-called "industry pundits") that maintain that Linux won't take over the desktop because it's missing feature X or application Y. They then go on to say that the Open/Free Software community will never develop that feature or application "because Open Source programmers aren't interested in that area of computing." I've never believed that argument because as the use of Linux grows the community adds to its population of talented people who are interested in some previously obscure area of computing.

Those who have been using Linux for a long time will remember when there was considerable discussion over whether or not the OS needed a purpose built windowing system. At the same time the "industry pundits" were writing that Linux would never become popular because there wasn't a dedicated windowing system for the OS and furthermore, there weren't enough programmers interested in developing such a thing. Well, that prediction turned out to be wrong and now people have a choice of two very capable windowing systems in the form of KDE and GNOME. The windowing systems developed gradually as more people joined our community and took up the task of developing the software.

As Linux continues to grow we will see more and more applications being developed that replace similar applications in the Windows(tm) world. For each such app we gain some number of new adherents. Eventually one or more of those new adherents decides that he or she needs an application that does X "like I used to be able to do in Windows(tm)." The development of that application starts the accretion process again.

The people that are demanding that Linux make change W or add application Z need to relax a bit. If you can't write the application or make the kernel change yourself then someone else will sonner or later. I've always thought that part of the fun of Linux is the daily visit to Freshmeat to see what's new today. The more people that join our club the more fun we'll have.

Just my $.02,
Ron

Oh no, not another

[OpMindFck]

At first I thought the headline was referring to another HampsterDance ripoff like JesusDance.

Little dollar bills doing the twist. Surprised I havn't seen it yet.

Kupo Kupo!

[JessLeah]

If Mog does the Money Dance, does he start tossing GP at enemies? And what does it change the background to? O_o

Palm version

[DoorFrame]

One of the reasons that I'm able to keep track of my finances is that there's a Palm Pilot Quicken tool which allows me to track everything I do throughout the day, even when I'm nowhere near a computer to enter the transaction. Without this tool remembering every expense was getting extremely difficult and I was considering giving up on the project.

Now, before I even consider looking at this program, does it have a similar attachment?

Re:Palm version

[MCRocker]

No, it does not.

However, there is an extension mechanism developer's toolkit, so you could add a synchronization mechanism.

Porting or creating a mini version might be difficult because Palm's Java support is somewhat lacking. It would probably be a lot of work to get a port of MoneyDance working on J2ME, MID Profile.

Re:Palm version

[cyberassasin]

There is a Palm Sync Extension... Available here

It will support a variety of palm checkbook apps, such as Pocket Money, Splash Money, and the Palm Expense app..

Works well...

Good Luck

Re:MoneyDance on Linux -- Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

but it is free as in javap -d.

I pay for working programs.

[hughk]

I've had a few problems with Quickbooks in recent times so I have moved over to GnuCash. It isn't perfect, but I have the source code and the price is right and it can be easily tailored.

I don't object to a product that costs money, but it should, at least, work!!!

Re:I pay for working programs.

[On Lawn]

and it can be easily tailored.

So while you have the source code, this suggest to me that you've never looked at it.

Re:I pay for working programs.

[hughk]

Actually I have and also know the joy of building it without package management. I did some mods to the business objects definitions (C) and have been playing a little with the reporting (Guile). My current own project is to improve the year-end processing (prob. Guile).

I have been a customer of QB for a long time. It did the job relatively well, but has gotten extremely slow since they hacked the IE based front-end. Also, it wasn't fantastically well documented for a commercial product and it couldn't deal with currencies. As a small business I couldn't justify going to the next level of software, and in many cases the multicountry, multicurrency stuff would be difficult without buying some 'enterprise level' extras.

GnuCash is far from perfect, I have been able to use it since 1.7 and the stable version is pretty good.

Another thing that I like is the use of XML for data storage. Verbose, but dead easy to hand edit to correct things. If you want to, the file format is easily interfaced to so you can write extras in whatever language you want.

You pay for convenience

[Necroman]

As your parent post said, you are paying for convenience. This really falls into a time is money kinda thing.

Sometimes I want software that just works, and I need it right now. I don't want to have to download some open source program, get that working on whatever machine I have, then find out the X feature is not implemented yet or has a few bugs in it.

For the most part, commercial software will pass this test. You can normally just read the back of the box and it will tell you the features it has, and if it is right for you. If that is not enough, then maybe read a review or 2 online.

This falls under the same reason as why I keep a Windows machine around, convenience. I don't want to find this great app that is Windows only, then try to get it to run under WINE. I want it to work right then and there. And sorry to say it, but Windows still has the largest market share, therefore it will have the most software released for it.

Re:You pay for convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I want software that just works, and I need it right now.

There is nothing about Free Software that contradicts this.

I don't want to have to download some open source program

As opposed to going to the store and paying for some closed-source program? I fail to see how that is quicker.

get that working on whatever machine I have

Get it working? As in, install it? Hat eto break it to you buddy, but you have to do that with closed-source software as well.

then find out the X feature is not implemented yet or has a few bugs in it.

Yeah, 'cause that never happens with closed-source software.

You can normally just read the back of the box and it will tell you the features it has, and if it is right for you. If that is not enough, then maybe read a review or 2 online.

I fail to see how Free Software fails in this regard.

This falls under the same reason as why I keep a Windows machine around, convenience. I don't want to find this great app that is Windows only, then try to get it to run under WINE. I want it to work right then and there.

Funny, that's the main reason I avoid Windows software - convenience. I don't want to mess around with VMWare, Wine, dual-booting, or any other cruft. Fortunately, all of my software needs are met by Free Software that runs on Linux.

From a 4 year MD user...

[Johann]

I have used MD for about 4 years. It was the final piece of software that allowed me to delete Windows for ever. I am happy to see it return back to the capable hands of Sean Reilly. Appgen did nothing with it.

I have tried GNU Cash and while they have similar features, MD is *much* easer to use. MD has *way* better reporting and IMHO continue to have better support for on-line banking.

Hard-core Linux users may like GNU Cash. I certainly support the GNU project and I am grateful that GNU Cash is a viable alternative. But, if you have been using MS Money or Quicken, you probably will feel more comfortable using MD, especially 2003.

Another bonus for MD is that it is a Java application, so it will run on *any* platform. So, if you are still a dual-boot Linux/Windows user (why?), you can run MD on either one and not have to reboot simply to balance your checkbook.

BTW - $30 is a small price to pay for organized finances.
Jeff

Re:From a 4 year MD user...

[Mendax Veritas]

Another minus for MD is that it is a Java application, so it will run *slowly* on any platform.

Re:From a 4 year MD user...

[Johann]

If you use a J2SE version 1.4 JVM, you will not distinguish any difference between Moneydance and a native GUI application. Try it out -- you will be impressed.

here's a summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I skimmed through the comments in a attempt to summarize. lemme know if I got it correct:

Hi, I like free software because I'm cheap (not for you)

Hi, I like free software as in freedom to modify to suit my needs (not for you)

Hi, wow linux is so cool and hip and I like flashy slick looking software. oh and I'm not cheap (yes, for you)

did I miss anyone?

Waiting for the remix

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know when the sequel is coming out: Money Dance Dance Revolution?

But it's not GPL... so why don't you try:

[Anonymous Coward]

CheckBook Tracker which is GPL (i.e. FREE!) and supports online banking, balance forecasts, import QIF and more...

Another reason to fork over the cash...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can. Consider it part payment and part an investment in the future of commercial software on Linux.

Look, if we want jobs in software development there has to be commercial software. So if this project succeeds, perhaps more will, and this will increase the job market for us all.

Come on, it isn't that expensive...

-- ac at work

QIF importing not good enough

[John_Sauter]

I use Intuit Quicken to track investments as well as my various accounts. Although Quicken claims to export data in QIF format, some information is missed or corrupted. The article warns of possible duplicate transactions, and the reviewer omitted two of his accounts because he didn't want to fix them up manually. He speculates that the problem is with the software that created the QIF files, and I have verified this by trying unsuccessfully to import a QIF file back into Intuit Quicken.

It appears that the only reliable way to read Quicken data is by reading its native files. Considering the years of carefully-verified data I have entered into Quicken, I will wait for a replacement that reads these files. I regret that I do not know the format of Quicken's native files, or have any source for that information.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)

Re:QIF importing not good enough

[Uryene]

It appears that the only reliable way to read Quicken data is by reading its native files. [...] I will wait for a replacement that reads these files.

You may be waiting for a long time. I think there's a good chance that anyone who tries to do that would find themselves on the sharp end of a 'DMCA-style' lawsuit, courtesy of Intuit. Considering the other current misapplications of the DMCA, that wouldn't be at all surprising.

Re:QIF importing not good enough

[John_Sauter]

You are probably right, but I would argue that reverse engineering a file format for the purpose of facilitating communications between two programs is exempted by the DMCA.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)

Another alternative (at least for Macs)

[Fished]

I particularly like Budget. Unlike GnuCash, Quicken, and MoneyDance the last time I tried it, it actually makes budgeting the central feature of the program rather than an afterthought. This is the foundation of managing your finances.

Let's face it... if you just want to balance your checkbook, you can do that in a spreadsheet.

apt-get install gnucash

[bahamat]

Seems pretty easy to me.

Take a look at Jgnash (it is GPL)

[lessthan0]

I was a moneydance user for a couple of years, and it worked well, but I was put off by the closed source and opaque file format.

After a month of parallel testing, I switched on January 1 of this year to Jgnash.

It is also a java program, so it will run on Windows or Linux (I use it on Linux with the Sun JDK). It can supposedly import GnuCash data but I haven't tried. The code is open, the file format is XML.

Jgnash is not as mature as moneydance, and doesn't have all the features (yet), but it is stable, usable, and works great for me.

I haven't figured out how to do this in Quicken...

[ptomblin]

...is it possible to do it in GnuCash or MoneyDance?

I get paid a variable amount every week depending on how many hours I work. In order to plan ahead, I have Quicken automatically enter a number that's a conservative estimate of how much is going to come in every Friday for a few weeks in advance. But when that Friday is past and I hit "Download online transactions", it can't match up the estimated entry with the real entry, even though they have the exact same name, because the amounts are different. So every time I download, I have to find all the past estimates and remove them, because if I don't I'll think I've got thousands of dollars that I don't have.

Is there a solution to this in any of these programs?

Why would I need this?

[PetriWessman]

Not trying to troll here, just a bit puzzled. What do people use this sort of software for? I can't honestly figure out any use for me, personally.

I'm in Finland, and I have online access to my bank account - so I get the bank account reports from that. My VISA bill/account is also visible online. Cheques haven't been used here since, dunno, the 1960s or something. Most of my bills are on auto-pay at the bank. In other words, I already have online access to a snapshot of my current financial situation and upcoming scheduled transactions, and the online bank account transaction reports go back a fw months - beyond that I have to actually visit a bank physically, gasp :).

So I have to presume that either the banking systems in other countries are seriously behind Finland (would be no surprise), or that there's some other use people have for this sort of thing. Must be, since it's a popular class of software.

Re:Why would I need this?

[Kevinv]

Not unusual to have more than one bank account, or credit cards, or loans from different banks. At least in the US. Moneydance gives you a way of looking at your finances as a whole.

I've got online banking with autopay too, works great. But it doesn't tell me what's going on with my mortgage (except when I make payments) because that's at a different bank. My car loan is with yet another financial institution. My 2 credit cards, 1 with my online bank, 1 with someone else....

And Moneydance goes back as far as you want. Get audited 3 years down the line? your financials are right there.

And they are stored on your computer (encrypted if you wish) so you don't have to worry so much about the bank getting broken into, or going out of business.

Re:Why would I need this?

[Abcd1234]

And they are stored on your computer (encrypted if you wish) so you don't have to worry so much about the bank getting broken into, or going out of business.

Just a nit pick, but this last point is bollocks. :) The odds of your bank going out of business (as opposed to be acquired) are somewhere between slim and none. And the chance that the bank will get broken into and lose your records? Even slimmer (practically impossible), since a) it's all stored on computer these days and b) they keep massive offsite backups.

Frankly, if you're that paranoid, your home computer is no improvement! I'd be far more worried about a hard disk crash (what is the MTTF of most drives these days? For real, not manufacturer claims :), a nature disaster (do you keep offsite backups?), or a software error (kernel bug, etc) destroying my data.

Re:Why would I need this?

[mlippert]

Except that most of the online financial institutions don't give you access to records more than a year old (some only 6 months, some maybe 2 years). So for example if I want to know what I paid for a stock 3 years ago, I better have the record somewhere in my house because the brokerage house I purchased it through won't have (or won't make available to me) any records from that long ago.

It's the same w/ my bank. They only keep 1 years worth of my online payments, after that I better have saved my own records.

Ok, so who else read this as MonkeyDance...

[Anonymous Coward]

and was wondering why dancing simians was a suitable slashdot story?

Cuz it runs on Linux of course!

Re:Ok, so who else read this as MonkeyDance...

[carlos_benj]

Shouldn't that be dancing Ximians? Or would that be a story on Gnomoney....

I'll say it a million times...

[copponex]

First of all, let me preface this statement by the fact that I would do what I'm about to suggest, if I had any programming knowledge at all. I am reading books on XML and Java, but I know it will be months before I could start programming...

If anyone in the linux community wants to make millions of dollars, they need to create an accounting package that is designed for small businesses, AND as easy to use as quickbooks, AND can support an high number of simultaneous users (50 or so). I've looked at NOLA, ARIA, Compiere, Lazy8, SQL Ledger, and a ton of others, but no one even comes close to the interface and ease of installation in QuickBooks. You could even create an entire linux distro around the package, since many *many* small businesses don't have sales people doing anything but selling, writing e-mails, and looking up phone numbers.

The application can't be cobbled together between open source projects. It needs an integrated and have a consistent, intuitive interface. It needs to have in-depth reporting, with the ability to drill down inside the reports to locate specific information. It needs to have inventory control - in short, support for everything that the big boys do. And you don't have to even sell the program - just sell the support. This is, and has been, one of the biggest gaps in software that everyone knows about, but no one has tried to fix.

Re:I'll say it a million times...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that. Not sure why no one's picked up on that yet. That's one of the few places left that you could break ground in.

Re:I'll say it a million times...

[Tepar]

Um, the previous owner of MoneyDance, Appgen, has such a program. It's called MyBooks.

$99 for a 5 user license. You can use it standalone on one machine, of course, but to get the most bang for your $99, you need to install the server version on a Linux box, and the clients on your choice of Linux, MacOSX, or Windows.

I've been running it for a year, and it's been fantastic.

Monkeydance

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who misread the title as 'monkeydance' ? I was picturing Steve Ballmer giving a demonstration of Windows 2003 server.

Re:MoneyDance on Linux -- Huh?

[molarmass192]

There's nothing inherently wrong about putting out a Java application. I use a few myself (NetBeans & LimeWire) and they're as capable as many native apps. I do have a fairly high end machine however so the overhead of these apps is not really an issue. That said, the bulk of the overhead comes from the use of AWT and/or JFC, if SWT would just gain greater acceptance then the stigma associated with Java applications (client side, not server side) might be come a thing of the past.

Not to rant on, but if Sun hadn't been so enamoured with the concept of a full java stack in the first place then maybe the SWT "concept" would have taken root a long time ago and Java apps wouldn't have this negative label. If somebody from Sun is reading this, how about adding SWT to the JRE before .NET gains traction???

Re:I haven't figured out how to do this in Quicken

[Kevinv]

moneydance doesn't do this yet, but I think it's on the todo list to add the ability to manually match a manually entered transaction to a downloaded transaction.

Can it download transactions from the bank?

[scarolan]

I'm a Quicken and Quickbooks user and to be quite honest I'm fed up with both (especially quickbooks). The other night I tried to reinstall it on a computer I use for my business and it said I only have 15 more uses before I have to 'register'. I called the registration phone number and waited 15 minutes before they disconnected me. I was so frustrated not to be able to use the software I paid for the way I want while people who pirate the same software use it with no problems for free! These stupid anti-piracy measures only make it harder for legitimate users to use what they paid for. I would love to have a good alternative, and have even tried gnucash but nothing else I've found is as easy to use as Quicken. The main feature that I like is the ability to instantly download transactions from the bank, and pay my bills from right within the register just by typing 'send' where the check number goes. I don't mind paying six bucks a month to my bank for this convenience, as I save at least that much in postage, and much more in time. Anyone know if gnucash or MoneyDance can interface with the bank to download transactions. And yes, I know that you can download from the bank's website, then import into the program but it's inconvenient.

Re:Can it download transactions from the bank?

[mojogojo]

MD supports downloading transactions... there's a comment about that on MadPenguin's site.

I'm not sure if the program handles those 'send' transactions though - would have to download the free demo to find out I 'spose.

Unfortunately, I've been using Quicken so long, and have filed several years Tax returns using TurboTax (which imports directly from Quicken)... that I'm not sure MoneyDance is robust enough for me (or my degree of laziness) to be worth switching (even for $30). *shrug*

Windows Server 2003?

[Yankovic]

Look, i realize this may be completely off topic, but can I just say that there were a bunch of announcements yesterday around Win2k3, some of which are very interesting even to a Linux only crowd. The new TPC benchmarks, Ballmer saying that Windows is more innovative than Linux, the worldwide roll out and advertising campaign and so on. Yet nothing on slashdot was covered. TODAY they have a note about a personal cash management product release that very few people have ever even heard of! The tag line doesn't say Linux stuff that matters, it says stuff that matters and what MS does with W2k3 matters whether or not you actually run it.

Re:Windows Server 2003?

[daviddennis]

1 It is off-topic.

2 Slashdot will probably wait on the TPC benchmarks until they're done by someone independent of Microsoft.

3 Ballmer saying Windows is more innovative than Linux is not news. He's been saying that since he started feeling it was a threat.

4 I don't think Slashdotters are very interested in world-wide rollouts or advertising campaigns.

5 Surely the owners of this forum have a perfect right to have it show their biases. It's not at all bad compared to political forums, where Free Republic discourages Democrats and Democratic Underground deletes Republicans as soon as they are unmasked.

D

saying it was free

[sacrilicious]

I dont believe the article said ANYWHERE it was free.

I can forgive someone for thinking that the product might be free. This forum is not typically thought of as an advertising medium for commercial products; it's common for the topic to run in the vein of how to expand (or reclaim) dwindling rights, or to discuss a new technology (like a chip) that doesn't imply an immediate point of sale transaction between a company and a reader. It may not be illegitimate to have PR for a paid product here, but keep in mind it's competing with the likes of linux and open office when it comes to shaping the mindset of the readers.

hydrogen?

[Snodgrass]

hydrogen bill?

Man...alternative fuel and a Mac? This guy is totally out to lunch. :)

Yet Another GnuCash post

[ek_adam]

I started using GnuCash a couple of weeks ago. I'm running it on a PowerMac G4 350MHz with Mac OS X 10.2.5. I used MoneyDance for about one year in 2001-2002. Then it was discontinued. With some annoying file corruption bugs unfixed and apparently unlikely to be fixed I switched back to Quicken. The current release happened after the original programmer finally got rights to the code he wrote for Appgen.

Now that I have it compiled, I am happier with GnuCash than I was with MoneyDance. One big advantage of GnuCash over MoneyDance for someone leaving Quicken? GnuCash is very good with QIF imports. MoneyDance produces way too many duplicate entries after a QIF import.

On the other hand, the lack of a GnuCash binary distribution for some platforms will push some people to MoneyDance. It took my computer over 12 hours to compile GnuCash and all of its dependencies. Loading MoneyDance took a minute or two.

I don't want my money to dance.

[salesgeek]

I will not buy a product called "MoneyDance". It gives me visions of my life savings dancing into someone else's wallet. I will change my mind if it has a feature that will, say print money or automagically make my bank ballance increase.

$G

"general public" - consumption, that is...

[TheRealRamone]

Maybe the silly wording of the announcement is making it sound as if Moneydance were being released under the "general public license" (GPL) as a lot of software titles released for Linux (and discussed on Slashdot) tend to be.

Also, when announcing a commercial product - one normally also announces the asking price - eg

MyBogusCommercialSoftwareProduct (US $49 msrp)

or something to that effect.

Ask for it in stores

[ediron2]

Be sure to take a moment in the usual big-box stores and ask for MoneyDance. Build some demand for alternative software.

Why not use PerkBook?

[Frank of Earth]

Perl Based Checkbook

It's actually kinda basic, but it's all I wanted at the time. Try the demo

And what about mortgage tracking

[Greedo]

I can't find anything on the site about MoneyDance handling mortgages. Does it?

(And, of course, there is a difference in the way interest is calculated on Canadian mortgages, compared to US ones, so that would be something else ... at least for a Canuck like me.)

Also, why doesn't someone just build a bunch of Perl/PHP scripts that hook into a database, and make financial tracking a web-based application? People could install it on their box and access it from anywhere they wanted ... or just run it on a localhost.

no, its not that hard.

[Anonymous Coward]

i already have gtk/gnome apps running on windows, they are all gettign ported, its just a matter of time.

Also available on OS/2.

[Anonymous Coward]

First saw this software at Warpstock in '97.

BitTorrent download?

[koreth]

I'd love to check this program out, but the company's site seems to be Slashdotted, and at my current transfer rate, the Windows installer will take about 4 days to finish downloading. Anyone have a BitTorrent link (or even a mirror site) for the installer?

Another alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

to MoneyDance and GnuCash would be to run good ol' quicken under CrossoverOffice or Wine. I'm using Quicken 2001 under Crossover office and it works like a champ.

It's also nothing like

[yerricde]

It's also nothing like Dance Dance Revolution East Invasion.

Hampster Dance 2

[yerricde]

or the fact they actually bothered to register hamsterdance2.com and make an "even better" hamsterdance.

That's because the company that was hosting the original Hampster Dance stole the domain hampsterdance.com right out from under Hampton's feet. Hampton's agent had to go out and register HD2 just to get the hamsters back up.

Now I want a replacement for TurboTax

[GCP]

GnuCash is nice, but the need to run TurboTax keeps me tied to Windows (or Mac). And even with a Windows version, next year's version won't open this year's .tax file (no backward compatibility in TurboTax, ever), and now that I have it "activated" to this machine, even archiving the original installer disk in a shoebox won't help me if I'm using a different machine.

What a bother, and I haven't even mentioned that, oh yeah, I have to pay for it, too. (I'm not implying that I think anyone owes me free software, just that that is an additional drawback of this product.)

Of course, I don't think I'd trust the "open source community" to do it very well, or they'd have the 2003 tax product ready "when it's ready" instead of in time to actually use it.

So, I'd like to see the IRS produce the software that serves as the "reference implementation" of the tax forms, and for them to open source it and archive past year's versions for free downloading at any time.

MoneyDance ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Greenspan in a leotard anyone ?

"he's a maniac, maniac for me"

what a stupid name

[CanadaDave]

moneydance? that's got to be the stupidest name ever

What about Quasar?!?

[wcdw]

I didn't see any mention to quasar (www.linuxcanada.com), here or on madpenguin.

Quasar is a) free, b) runs on both Linux and Windows and is c) multi-user. Some of its add-on modules are available for a *VERY* nominal cost, but the base product is fairly comprehensive, and even looks depressingly like its Winblows-inspired ilk.

Re:What about Quasar?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing you forgot to mention was c) Quasar sucks. Maybe that's why nobody mentioned it. What, did you write the software or something? Cross posting to both of these sites and taking shots at peoples credibility? Troll

Re:What about Quasar?!?

[wcdw]

You know what they say -- everybody's got an opinion, and they all......

Gir!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm daaancing like a monkey!
Monkey dance!
--Gir