[GNC-dev] Interest

[Christopher Lam]

Hi
I am not an original developer on this loan assistant.
However I think that the original loan druid was designed to
calculate/estimate the loan repayment amounts, assuming a conventional
loan, with a non-zero interest rate.
If the interest rate was zero, there would be little need for a loan druid.
e.g. original loan = $1,000 and 20 repayments of $50 each... A simple
calculator would do the trick.
I do not think there has ever been a policy against having a zero-rated
loan... but I think that the loan module has not been properly tested with
such figures. So, I am not entirely sure that a "simple refactoring" is a
good description of the process; it would require a complete review of the
loan assistant, and more testing of code to handle zero-interest loans, to
ensure crashes such as division-by-zero do not occur.
There is very little time developer CPU cycles available for such work; if
you are able to assist in reviewing code, enabling and testing, you are
very welcome on board.
So I think, at least, the "Loan Repayment Calculator" message "The interest
rate cannot be zero" should really be "The loan calculator does not handle
zero interest rates."

On Tue, 11 Dec 2018 at 20:05, Hamidreza Jafari <hamidrjafari at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I use GnuCash mostly for personal finance and use its basic features,
> that's
> why I have not tried it completely with all its capabilities. When I
> decided
> to translate I had no idea I would encounter parts of it designed in
> specific
> doctrines. This is one such string that paused my for a while:
>
> Enter the annual interest rate in percent. Accepts values from 0.001 -
> 100.
> The Mortgage Assistant does not support zero-interest loans.
>
> Although it is possible to set up zero interest business using extra
> effort it
> is better that the tool can be used at a policy level. Historical views on
> the
> subject are clear. It is true that Islam (which was referred to as Sharia)
> takes sides about it, it is not the only one contending. There are some
> issues
> in life that are not a matter of voting simply because of limited capacity
> of
> everyday person.
>
> It is not clear to me if there are some other parts in GnuCash that have
> been
> designed in similar ideas. I would like it to be accepting of the moral
> side
> by allowing interest-free transactions (I currently suffice to this level
> of
> goodness advocacy). I hope it is designed and implemented in such a way
> that
> extension is possible if not a simple refactoring can do the job.
>
> What's the situation?
>
> Hamid
>
>
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