Strategy

[Robert L Brush III]

I can tell you that GnuCash is rock solid and reliable.  It may be
boring, but it is really stable and really good.  To some degree, as
long as it continues to be this good, it really doesn't matter what is
in the hairball, it must be good too :)  Think about how many flawless
backups GnuCash makes over the course of the day, every day.. for years,
thousands and then some.. this kind of thing doesn't get much praise,
but when you find yourself in the kind of mess that you learn about what
is going on, it is such a relief that someone thought about it before
you even needed it!  

Starting over, by definition, will be more complicated than continuing.
It's like saying we need to make a bigger hairball because working with
the current one is going to be even harder, not sure it could be--IF all
other things are kept equal.  Now, if you throw out a bunch of features,
compatibility, reliability, and stability.. then you might be able to
come upon another program that could be considered a good start, for a
time (until it becomes a hairball) and possibly, for a reduced user
base, sacrifice one or all of the mentioned features.  I know this is
all with the best of intentions for sure, but it just won't make for the
best return.  

Formerly I was user of quickbooks, and our company counted on this
software.  (BTW, it only ask you to backup every n times you close the
file, and really, I mean, it just said "would you like to?" "no" was the
usual answer, who has time to wait for it to do whatever it is doing..)
One of the things that would really burn me up was that we would spend a
whole year slaving over the program entering our precious data, only to
see it become a ball and chain.  Each year we would have to buy back our
freedom for another year..  Features would stop working by design
(payroll will not be supported after...), or another new hardware or
software would push us to another os version which would  cause some
problem, and of course we pay for premium support , only to find that
the answer was always simple, this version doesn't support that
configuration, you will have to upgrade.  Countless times we decided to
jump ship only to find that the cost of the old data was too great.
Running two systems parallel is not efficient, paying to convert the old
data to a new system is not reasonable.  So there we were, watching our
own effort used against us to extract more money, each year only adding
to the problem.

>From that perspective GnuCash both in it's current form, and direction,
is really good.  Much effort is put into compatibility between the
latest versions and the older versions. You can't be imprisoned by your
own data, as the file can be opened and read in plain text, the project
doesn't build walls around the data, but instead makes it very open.  If
it all started over from scratch compatibility with the current project
would be a requirement if it was expected that the current installed
base would migrate, and I would say you wouldn't have a high percentage,
even being optimistic, there are too many ways to go, and the new
version would just be one of many ways to go, and a less experienced way
at that.  

If all the developers quit at one time, even then, I don't think the
project could stop, there are too many people with an interest in it
continuing, and they would just pick up and go.  This is the really
safe,  and really nice thing about a project that is truly open.  It's
not like some projects, where the team develops a really good product,
but you have to pay to receive the good product, if you are interested
in the open source version, you'll find it out of date, behind in
features, and with small glitches here and there.. (that's ok, you can
always pay for the shiny new version.. or buy support)  With GnuCash the
whole thing is right there, not secret, not for a select few, for anyone
and everyone, and for free!


-Bob