[GNC-dev] Conditions to move revamped GnuCash Mobile App to GnuCash org

[john]

> On Sep 28, 2022, at 5:09 PM, Daniel Brown <gnucash at djbrown.de> wrote:
> 
> Hello GnuCash devs,
> 
> does someone here have (had) a relation to the gnucash-android project?
> I couldn't find a way to contact the mainter "codinguser" and the project is abandoned: https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/GnuCash_and_Mobile_Devices
> 
> Recently there have been a couple of people (including me) who would like to contribute/maintain/fork/rewrite the project to keep it alive: https://github.com/codinguser/gnucash-android/issues/913
> 
> I have started a couple of steps to revive the project and will try to establish a new leading fork so that all the open contributions can find its way into the app. And as part of this revamp I would consider aligning the project to gnucash.org
> 
> What would be necessary, to move and continue the project under the gnucash org in the future?
> 
> I mean not only GitHub organization, but it would would be great to see the project as an official part of the community, with vendor "GnuCash" in the app store, mailing-list for support and so on.

Ngewi created Gnucash for Android as a Google Summer of Code project. The previous year's GSoC student, Muslim Choclov, acted as Ngewi's mentor, and since we were denied direct participation I arranged for the Gnome Foundation to get us a slot. Several of us provided Ngewi with technical advice while he was working on the original implementation, particularly with details about which import format would work best.

Ngewi requested that we allow him to piggyback onto our (really Christian Stimming's) legacy free UserVoice account; 2013 was about the time that Uservoice stopped allowing new free accounts. Christian duly created a sub-account for him and he used it for a bug tracker until he bailed 

We haven't heard from Ngewi for more than 4 years and we removed the reference to GnuCash for Android 2 years ago because it was clear at that time that Ngewi wasn't coming back. 

The short version of all that is that GfA has never been a part of GnuCash: Once he'd completed the GSoC project he didn't interact much with us at all, nor we with him or the GfA project. Every once in a while someone will pop in and ask something about GfA on gnucash-users or the #gnucash IRC channel. We tell them we don't really know anything about GfA and they go away. AFAIK--and I encourage somebody to contradict me here--nobody who uses the mailing lists or IRC channel regularly uses GfA.  Add to that that while https://github.com/codinguser/gnucash-android/issues/913 has been going on for more than 9 months you're the first person to come here to discuss it and it's pretty easy to conclude that the GfA community, such as it is, isn't all that interested in GnuCash.

So for GfA to "join the GnuCash community", GfA users and developers have to join the GnuCash community. A good way to start would be to hang out in gnucash-user and on the IRC channel. When somebody comes along with a GfA question, answer it. Encourage users in the other GfA channels to ask their questions and offer their help in gnucash-user too. For the developers, engage here in gnucash-devel and in gnucash-user. Do market research: Why don't GnuCash more users with Android phones use GfA? Can/should GfA integrate better with GnuCash? How? 

Regards,
John Ralls