GnuCash and running a business?

[Reinhard Müller]

Linas Vepstas wrote:
> 
> On Mon, May 21, 2001 at 02:20:31PM -0400, Paul Lussier was heard to remark:
> > I'm wondering if I will be capable of (in the future, not
> > necessarilly soon) running a business with GnuCash someday.  Or do
> > you think that (the still vaporware) GnuEnterprise project is better
> > suited for that type of things.
> 
> The GnuE people are good people,

Thanks :-)

BTW GNUe is just leaving the status of vapourware.

> but GnuEntreprise has a very different
> set of goals.  "Enterprise" is a secret code word used by businesses
> to denote software that costs at least $250K or 10 or 20 times that,
> and is used by thousands of users (in one company).   One has to rethink
> the infrastructure in that kind of environment, and it is indeed
> infrastructure, not apps, that gnuE is mostly concerned with (right now).

This is correct. Right now, we are building a set of tools that will
enable us (and others) to build the "real" applications. But there are
already proposals and specifications about the final applications being
created at the moment.
Although, we are aware that small business will be our first customer
:-).

> Accounting need not be gnue's first application, there are many other
> interesting things one could build.

This is also correct. Our primary focus will be supply chain management
(inventory, purchase, sales etc.) rather than accounting. One of the
reasons for this is that GnuCash seems very usable for a small business
accounting, and we are considering seriously to think about interfaces
to GnuCash someday.
But, we _are_ working at an accounting proposal, too, which will
probably fit "larger" companies.

> > I guess the things that I'd be interested in seeing in
> > business-related software would be things like:
> >
> >       - payroll
> >       - project tracking
> >       - billing (time/services)
> >       - personell/materiel management

These are clearly in the scope of GNU Enterprise. I'm not sure if they
are in the scope of GnuCash.

Thanks,
--
Reinhard Müller
GnuCash fan
Gnu Enterprise developer