Will GnuCash ever work for me?

[Derek Martin]

On Thu, Sep 20, 2001 at 04:17:32PM -0700, Dave Peticolas wrote:
> > The Gnome homepage seems to disagree:
> 
> No, it doesn't, it just refers you to Ximian to get
> *their* packages of Gnome 1.4. 

Sure, but they're obviously packages that are endorsed by the Gnome
project, such as it is.  And if it's compiled from the same exact
source code, then practically speaking, what's the difference (besides
a few desktop icons)?  If there is a practical difference, why does
the Gnome project not provide its own dowloads, but instead send you
to Ximian?  Why is the GPP not more prominent on their site?

> Many other people besides Ximian employees work on Gnome 1.4.

Which is totally irrelevant.

> Ximian does not own Gnome.

Technically, they do own a substantial portion of it.  It's
copyrighted by their programmers, though released under the GPL.  It
was created by Miguel De Icaza (founder of both Gnome and Ximian), who
wrote a lot of the code (along with his less-well-known partner whose
name I invariably forget) that is the foundation of Gnome.  All of
which is irrelevant to the question of whether or not Ximian Gnome is
or is not Gnome 1.4.  The only fact which is relevant to that question
is whether or not the code base for the two is substantially
different.  Based on what the Gnome Project's own homepage says, that
does not appear to be the case, and therefore they are the same, for
all intents and purposes.

You can argue about what difference constitutes substantially
different, but again, the Gnome Project's web page is telling you to
get Gnome 1.4 from Ximian's site, so I don't think that's a
particularly worthwhile debate.  THEY seem to be satisfied that it's
substantially enough the same...

We seem to have gone WAY off topic, so I'm going to shut up now.

-- 
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Derek Martin          |   Unix/Linux geek
ddm@pizzashack.org    |   GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D
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