import/export bounty

[Ian Turner]

On Monday 22 September 2008 20:07:57 Ian Smith-Heisters wrote:
> If the shortage of developer cycles is really as intractable as you
> make it sound, I fear this project will eventually become stagnant and
> obsolete. Should I be looking at investing my time and money into
> another OSS accounting software project that has more steam ;) ?

This is a very real and serious possibility; I would encourage any serious 
members of the gnucash community (of which I am not one) to take heed. What 
Ian describes is almost exactly what happened to the Amanda Backup project. 
There was nearly a decade with an active user community but almost no 
development of any kind going on. Worse, nobody felt they had the authority 
(or the time) to make architectural changes, so what development did take 
place was mostly bad hacks on top of other bad hacks.

This stagnation proceeded until the intervention of Zmanda, which is still 
cleaning up the mess several years later. I don't think gnucash is going to 
see a VC company take up the mantle, so I cannot exhort the project leaders 
enough that it takes more that "Patches Always Welcome" to create a vital 
project. That was also a common phrase in the stagnant years, but I urge you 
to consider whether it is a solicitation or an excuse.

All the best,

--Ian