import/export bounty

[Ian Smith-Heisters]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 10:05 AM, Chris Shoemaker <c.shoemaker at cox.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 08:55:15AM -0700, Ian Smith-Heisters wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 7:05 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
>> > As this is the developer list, I'll state my standard reply:
>> > Patches Welcome.   :-D
>>
>> Well, yes, I could do that. I just figured it would be more efficient
>> to pay someone that's more familiar with the codebase than myself. I'm
>> not Mr. Moneybags, I'm a working freelance developer. As such, my time
>> is worth a very specific amount, and I know that my time would be
>> better spent in my domain of expertise and hiring someone whose domain
>> is GnuCash.
>>
>> Now I find that hiring a GnuCash specialist is impossible, so I'm
>> willing to work with someone more familiar than myself, but not a
>> specialist per se.
>
> Not technically impossible - just very expensive.  I'd consider myself
> very familiar with the GnuCash codebase, but I'm not cheap and have
> effectively zero "free" time for GnuCash for the foreseeable future.
> I'm sure I'm not the only one.
>
>> I'm also willing to put my time into getting more funds together,
>> but I won't do it without the support of the core team.
>
> Not to discourage you _at_all_, but just so you're aware what kind of
> investment would be required to make a significant impact on GnuCash,
> you should probably be thinking in the $15k-$50k+ range before this
> starts looking viable.
>

How did you arrive at those figures? It'd be useful to know what needs
to get done before any features can be added, and how much time is
involved since the $ sum will differ depending on who's doing the
work. Nonetheless, those figures aren't at all surprising.

Has GnuCash considered doing a Google Summer of Code? I would be
unqualified to act as a mentor, but I'd be willing to do the tedious
administravia. Again, I'd need the support of the core team.

> -chris
>