GNUCash Financial Contribution

Thu Aug 14 12:52:41 CDT 2003

Following my recent article, I was recently contacted by Joel Burton who wants 
to contribute money to the project.  For the sakes of transparency, and with 
his permission I am copying this exchange to gnucash-devel.  Getting us 
slashdoted doesn't make me the official representative of the GnuCash 
project, so I think this conversation should be open to all contributors.

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On Tuesday 12 August 2003 01:59, you wrote:
> Benoit --
>
> I read your open letter re: GNUCash contributions today. And I read a
> lot of the Slashdot responses to it. As often happens when I read
> Slashdot, I got mildly angry at the petulant, whiny attitude, the
> trolling, flaming, and generally crappy signal-to-noise ratio. (And,
> yes, I've considering not reading Slashdot for a while :) )
>
> But I left thinking: I use GNUCash for my invoicing of clients (I'm a
> consultant). I think it's a nice piece of software and you guys deserve
> to have it win. What should I do to help?
>
> I am a programmer, but my C skills are way out of date, and have no
> Scheme skills to speak of. I could write documentation, but it appears
> you already have some end user docs but need someone to help coordinate
> and clean it up, and I don't have time to lead a project to do that,
> unfortunately. Perhaps later this year. We'll see.
>
> I do have some cash, though, and if nothing else works, that often does.
> Would a cash donation help the project? I'm thinking $1,000 USD would be
> appropriate, given my ability to donate and your worth to me.
>
> I was considering contracting GNUCash development time to work on the
> feature I'd most like (SQL storage for the new small business features),
> but I've decided, no, you guys should work on what you think is most
> important. So consider only that I'm offering a +1 for
> yes-I'd-LOVE-to-see-that-feature.
>
> To whom should I send a check/credit card/paypal donation?

Well, let me first say thank you!  This is obviously a very flattering 
endorsement for the project.  

Now, since you contacted me, here's my take on it:

The GnuCash project doesn't have much direct needs in cash.  There is no 
non-profit organization to support, the only real unavoidable expense is the 
gnucash.org domain registration.  Having managed volunteer endeavours in 
various fields for all my adult life, I know splitting even insignificant 
amounts of cash between volunteers always leads to... well unease to be 
polite.  

If we take that money to split it among important contributors, we would have 
to decide who is eligible, and how much each one gets.  I personally strongly 
believe we don't want to get into that.  If you really want to donate to 
developers, you are free to do so (it has been discussed in the past), but 
YOU should decide who get's what.  It's the Christmas card idea, (you send 
developer(s) an envelope with a tank you postcard and a small check).

Having said that, and since 1000USD is a sizeable contribution, here's what I 
think you can do to really help the project.  The first option is what I 
think is best.

Option 1:

Finance a single developer to speed up work on what you want, which is 
basically your original idea.  Paying for work to be done in the future is 
fair to all, and doesn't require us to assess the "worth" of past 
contribution (only to vouch that the chosen developer is competent).  It's 
also a good example to give to other potential financial backers.

I spoke to Matthew Vanecek and he is interested.  Other developers have the 
skills to do it, but as he is the one currently working on the postgress 
rewrite and he does data modeling for a living he seems the logical choice .  
I verified that he could promise that it would indeed speed up this part of 
the project.  He says that he would definitely devote considerable time to 
popping out a viable SQL backend for that price.

I don't think due to the scope of the work and the amount of money involved 
that you could really agree on a deliverable, so this would be a good faith, 
best effort thing.  Off course the two of you are free to make whatever 
agreement you think is appropriate.

Option 2:

-Finance a gnucash developer get-together in Boston.  With 1000$ and planing 
in advance we could probably manage to pay the plane tickets of all the 
developers in North America  who are not within driving distance of Boston.  
Face to face communication would most definitely help in doing some real 
design and planing for gnucash, and clarify a lot of obscure areas.  Also, 
most of us have never met, and this would no doubt be really fun for all 
involved.  If this is what you decide to do, we will need a custodian for the 
money.  The logical person is Linas Vepstas.  He's been with the project 
almost since the beginning and has become active again lately.

> And what else can I do? I am particular expert in PostgreSQL, so it's
> possible that I could help with the SQL storage stuff.

Well, you could help Matthew test what he writes... :)

> Thanks! I think you guys are great.
>
> - j.
>
> P.S. I would consider funding the SQL-storage for small businesses (or
> more likely, given the complexity of that task, contributing to that
> funding) if someone is interested in that. And would also consider
> funding something to help with the distribution issues--I run Mandrake
> 9.1, and did find it damn near impossible to upgrade my GNUCash from the
> version they provided because of all the related requirements.

I use Mandrake for development.  I don't think funding in this area is 
necessary.  All we need is someone who maintains a virgin 9.1 system to build 
the RPM (mine tend to drift towards cooker).  It may even be me, as I'm about 
to install 9.1 on my laptop (and keep it virgin)as there is no point in 
having cooker on that machine).  But hey, if you want to finance me to do 
that, who am I to complain.

Good night,

P.S.:  For the sake of transparency, do you mind if I also send this message 
to gnucash-devel?

-- 
Benoit Grégoire
http://step.polymtl.ca/~bock/