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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."
If this software is so important then why not raise some money and pay some developers to work on it. If the creators really believe in the project they should be confident that they'll make the spent money back in support (or at least t-shirt sales)
Why don't we have GnuCash selling licenses to those who actually need and are willing to pay for it? This way the company can hire more people if the project turns out to be interesting and needed by many people. It's radical, but seems to work for lots of other little guys.
As someone who uses Gnucash (I'm an accountant, too) I had no idea the project was in trouble. This is one of the best programs I've come across in the Linux world, and I think it's superior to similar commercial packages. The operation is closer to how you're taught to do accounting, and I love it for that. Well, if someone out there knows how a sympathetic non-coder could lend a hand, let me know. Yes, I did RTFA, and I didn't see a way to contribute without knowing how to hack code.
IAAL
If only it worked with Gnome 2? I mean honestly, even after installing Gnome 1.4 in hopes of being able to use GNUCash, I got it to run only to notice that there was no text, anywhere. None. Maybe thats a problem that only I'm lucky enough to have, but I'm sure if it didnt take so much to use it, more people would. It seems silly to have to install an entire (or at least most of) an old version of a "complete desktop environment" just to run one app.
Chaos is Divine *
In the past QuickBooks has pretty much been it for small businesses, and is one of the reasons I bought Win4Lin when I migrated to Linux--so I could still run QuickBooks. But I hate it with a passion.
I've been wanting to investigate GnuCash for sometime. When I was on RedHat 7.3 I couldn't even get the damn thing to compile and I couldn't resolve all the dependency issues, so I eventually gave up. Now that I've upgraded to RedHat 9.0 GnuCash was one of the installable packages--and I installed it.
It is my intention to play around with it and see if I can migrate my small business finances to it and abandon QuickBooks altogether. Even if GnuCash were to suck as bad as QuickBooks I'd like to ditch QuickBooks just on principle. QuickBooks doesn't even support multiple currencies, which is just silly.
GnuCash is a full-fleged dual entry accounting system: you can run your business accounting with it.
Quicken and Money are not: they are just good for keeping track of your personal bank accounts.
The bold text above may not mean anything to you, and it meant nothing to me until about a year ago when I started learning some accounting stuff. I don't know why accounting is so excruciatingly painful to learn for us developers... but once you finally get it, you realize that it is actually not that complicated, and why it simply works. Now, while I'm still a developer and not an accountant, even for my personal finance, I will not do without dual entry. I tried Kmymoney and Microsoft Money, but they just don't cut it. Now I can't live without GnuCash.
Please, do not let GnuCash die. If you can help that project, by all means, please do.
I code, therefore I am.
your confused though, GNUcash really isn't supposed to be a personal finance app. It's supposed to be for accounting. This isn't a quicken/ms money replacement, this is a Quickbooks/peachtree replacement.
Well I admit I went ahead and read most of the comments while I was waiting for the server to respond.... And a lot of the criticism of the GnuCash team sounded reasonable. But, after reading the FA, I have to say... Go GnuCash, and that accountant guy who loves it so much should write a book about how to use it, in collaboration with the developers who are currently documenting the API.
/. community... they didn't come here, we (or, at least the /. editors) brought the story here. So, how about some constructive responses to their plan? I think if they can get half of it done in the next few months, the project will live and evolve for many more years. Sounds like the compromise of using C and Scheme could work great here (you Python developers are trolling), as long as the core and plugin functionality are well divided. Not knowing what their code looks like, I wondered how well that has been done to date.
Enough of the bitching from the
On a related note, I would suggest one more thing to those who wish to see this plan bear fruit: Reduce the dependency tree!! That will need to happen, any way you cut it. I'm sure this is possible if the developers attack it from all possible angles.
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Not to be confused with Col.
I know no one wants to hear it, but I personally think this app is dying to be ported. I mean apache and mysql are and they're both huge successes.
Would this be the first open source windows accounting package?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin