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GnuCash - A Call For Help
sedition writes "GnuCash developer Benoit Gregoire has written the State of the GnuCash Project. It is a call for help to the Open Source community regarding the open-source accounting software for Linux, Mac OSX, and more. GnuCash is one of the largest (287,853 lines of code), but least publicized Open Source projects. Now it needs developer support, as its future is uncertain."
How did it get so many lines of code if it isn't very well known? Do we have one coder slaving away on this one?
I personally like the idea of having alternatives to proprietary software.
I tried to get my wife to use it. She was taking a personal finance class that required Quicken. I thought we could give GnuCash a try and maybe save some dough/impress the teacher.
Boy was I wrong. I figured out the take-out-of-one-account-to-credit-another system, but I couldn't figure out how to put money into the system.
Anyway, we spent a few hours on it, but eventually just forked over the dough for Quicken and rebooted into Windows.
I'm not wishing death to GnuCash, but it is in need of huge improvements to be up their with the other accounting (personal and otherwise) that I've seen.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Maybe you could write a sort of "Why-To" - explain to people why to use a double-entry system like Gnucash as opposed to single-entry systems out there.
You could give folks some good advice as to what sort of accounts to set up so that when tax time comes around, they can better track what's what.
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Why is Gnucash unpopular? Because 3 out of every 4 people I've talked with who've wanted to try it couldn't satisfy the dependencies for their distribution (most of these people aren't newbies to Linux either.)
That said, it truly is in a league of its own in the Linux software world, and I hope it finds what it's looking for in new developers.
Disclaimer: I haven't used it for a year or more, so it may have overcome some of this already
Damn, imagine what I could do with a quarter of a million lines of python code. Seriously C is a great language for systems work, but writing accounting packages in C is just not the way to go.
Got Code?
Maybe with a financial donation? Perhaps the GNUcash people could set up a pledge system where a bunch of folks can promise to pay some money and then when a certain number of pledges are made, everyone donates their part. The "keep GNUCash alive" fund or something.
And before anyone says that paying for open source software is backwards, remember that you're paying for software freedom. That is, you could spend $100 on a commercial accounting program for one copy, or you could spend $100 on GNUCash and have unlimited copies, plus way better support (you get to talk to the developers themselves, they actually listen to your feature requests, etc). Which would you rather have?
Most folks can't hack code. And even if they can, most projects have enough coders (remember what they say about too many cooks). However, the remaining 99.99% of the population can easily help by simply donating money. Not code. It's ok that you can't code. In fact, they'd rather you didn't. OSS projects need m-o-n-e-y.
GnuCash brings a new method of money management to the table (accounts)
How is this new? I took an accounting course back in high school, and Gnucash works almost exactly like what I learned (general ledger, accounts, etc.).
How do other popular applications handle things?
Potential? GnuCash _works_. It has 250k lines of code written already. Frankly, it's one of the best Linux apps I've ever used, and has a very sane interface. Then again, I've never used Quicken, so what do I know?
Why you're advocating throwing away a perfectly good program that just needs some more developers and documentation is totally beyond me. A dedicated documentation effort for GnuCash would probably only take a month to do, max.
If I had to hazard a guess, you're not a software developer. Re-inventing the wheel every ten minutes is a bigger waste of time than trying to fix a slightly old, good one.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
A good test of a new program is how easy it is to use the first time you sit down with it.
;)), everything seemed logical, easy to use, and down right intuitive. Sure, they weren't perfect and they is plenty of room for improvement, but it was a good program that was almost fun to use.
With MS Money (now there's a scary term
With GnuCash, I had to fight to use the program. The whole layout/ideology seemed very odd if not completely stupid. I didn't want to spend half a day fighting with the program on setting up accounts or entering transactions just to do what MS money let me do in just a few minutes of setup. And just FYI, I hadn't used MS Money is about 3 years when I sat down with GnuCas just a few months ago, so the reason I was fighting the program was not because I was used the the MS way.
Make the money management program simple to use for simple things, and let it make complex things doable. GnuCash does not do this. Neither does MS Money. But at least MS Money let me do the simple things simply without having to fight it. I for one would be glad to see GnuCash follow MS Money in that respect, and then watch it surpass MS Money.
Space for rent, inquire within
Hmm, I'm wondering how does Red Hat makes money. They sell only open source software. WAIT! Wait!!!! What did I say? They sell some free software!!!?!?!
Excerpt from the GPL:
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I am not sure what affords GnuCash the title of "least publicized," as I've heard the title many times and infact it came with RedHat whenever I last installed that.
/. that two major things keeping me away from using Linux is the lack of any sort of decent finance management software and an Outlook-type thing. My whole life is in MS Money and Outlook.
Some months ago I said on
I heard things about GnuCash being hopeless to install unless it came packaged with your distro, so I was excited when I found out that the version of RH about to come out will include it.
Thus began my most-recent attempt to switch to Linux. I exported my Outlook archives into Evolution, and my Ms Money accounts into GnuCash.
It lasted about a week. By the end of the week I was thoroughly dissapointed with the mediocrity of both of the pieces of software. Yes, they are usable. yes, GnuCash added up numbers together, but no,the user experience was mediocre compared to what I was used to with my Microsoft applications. That, and the shitty sound support, eventually made me say "fuck it" and switch back to Win2k and I'm happily using it since.
I think most everyone agrees that GnuCash is a critical piece of software for the Linux desktop. Yes. Absolutely....
GnuCash is a long program (well at work we deal with about 150 times that much code..) but from a user perspective of someone who's known better, it sucks. I am glad that the focus isn't only to find more coders. What this thing needs is some normal human beings using it and saying "you know what, it's NOT acceptable that window A obscures window B and freezes while window B is waiting for input from me." It needs, I am sorry to say, Quicken or MS Money users, who say "It was really easy to do X, Y, and Z, but here, I can't even figure out if it's possible,"
Good luck to this project, absolutely. Maybe - evnetually - projects like this will mature and become useful to people who don't care about open source and don't hate Microsoft. Yes, GnuCash appeals if you're maniacal about those things. It does not appeal if you're looking for better and more useable software. Unfortunately, a lot of Linux stuff can be described thusly.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
I was thinking of writing the exact same thing.
:)
If it were in Python, I might volunteer to help myself.
Seriously, can anyone name ONE SINGLE advantage that C (or even C++) has over Python for this type of app? Certainly, Python is fast enough -- so what if it has to cycle through all your records once in a while. That's not going to take all day. With C/C++ you have to worry about all kinds of low level crap like buffer overflows. You shouldn't have to think about that kind of thing when writing applications that involve business logic. You should only have to focus on the application logic, something Python lets you do much better than C/C++ does.
Now, don't get me wrong, I like building stuff from source as much as the next Slashdotter, but these guys just use way too many external libraries.
There current "Software Requirements" page lists these dependencies (some or all of which may be required):
- Gtk+, Gnome, Glade -- I have no problem with these as they're pretty much standard issue now
- Guile -- This is a complete bitch to build and install, in my experience. I understand the need for scripting in an application like this, but why not pick a good language like Perl
:)
- G-wrap, slib -- some more Scheme stuff that just seems like crap they needed because they were too lazy to write some of their own code
- GtkHTML -- do you really need a HTML parser in an accounting program? Why not just use Mozilla to display your HTML?
- libghttp -- same thing here. HTTP isn't THAT complicated, especially for what they're using it for. Write it yourself and save us a download.
- Gnome XML -- No one NEEDS to save their accounting data in some XML file format? What's wrong with the standard Quicken format that everyone is used to or even a nice, simple text file that I can munge with vi?
Okay, I'm done complaining now.I've actually been using Moneydance for the last few months to manage my finances. I know that it is Satan's accounting program, being written in Java and all, but you have to admit that its quite easy to download and install, especially if all you're interested in is balancing your checkbook a couple of times a year.
This fits into my pet theory of successful open-source projects rather nicely; every single flaw except one boils down to a lack of documentation.
"Work on the developer documentation problem" - obvious
"Fix core capabilities in the engine" - the exception, though one could stretch and observe that a lot of the problem is probably that nobody has a clue what is broken due to lack of documentation.
"Improve interoperability with other software or new modules" - fundamentally, the fact it was "non-interoperable" in the first place boils down to a lack of documentation, because why bother adding hooks to anything if nobody can figure out how to use them in less then a year? Adding hooks is easy, relatively speaking, and the payback is huge; the only reason to not do it is if you realize nobody could possibly use them if you added them.
"Make sure the mailing lists are easily searchable" - obvious
"Get more people write access to the website" - obvious
"Quickly implement a Wiki or similar system" - obvious
"Spend less time answering some types of questions" - they should be able to point people at a FAQ, a common type of documentation
If it isn't documented, it doesn't exist. GnuCash's problem is an excess of non-existence, which is rather odd considering how many lines of code it has.
It is so much easier to start the documentation in the first place, and keep it up, then to get to 250,000 LOC and just then try to start. Sometimes clever coders can actually be a liability to a project, because they can plow on where lesser men and women would have needed to pause, document, possibly re-organize, and simplify.
my $s = 'DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS';
$s =~ s/DEVELOPERS/DOCUMENT IT/g;
Most folks can't hack code. And even if they can, most projects have enough coders (remember what they say about too many cooks).
RTFA
The big problem is that they don't have enough coders! Money is not the issue, fixing bugs and documenting the interface is.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Is double-entry bookkeepping necessary for personal finance?
Is computerized bookkeepping necessary for personal finance? After all, you could just use a shoebox and rubberbands - that's all some people use.
However, the nice thing about DE is that you can immediately see if you've screwed up somewhere, as it will show up as an imbalance.
You can directly see how much money flows through your credit cards.
You can directly print out what is tax deductable, and should the Infernal Robbery System ask to see the records, quickly dispatch them with your Report, +5 of Audit Slaying.
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I gave up on trying to use GnuCash long ago due to the impossibility of compiling it, and getting it to run.
Yes. I am an economist turned coder. I understand investment theory and accounting, I've been building enterprise software for the past decade, and I have been looking for a finance/accounting project to hack on in order to add support for high-end investment management problems. GNU/Cash seemed ideal until I tried to build it. Bah! These guys don't seem to have any real experience with software design of medium sized systems.
GC needs to broken up into smaller pieces that can be independently studied and built with limited dependencies on external packages. I should be able to build a command line accounting system using a base set of transaction libraries without needing to have much else installed except the libs and precompiler for my chosen backend database. Same for reports. They should need only the db support libs and an XML lib for parsing XML defined reports. Everything else is just GUI convenience or eye candy.
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