State of GnuCash, two suggestions

[BenoitGrégoire]

On Saturday 16 August 2003 01:12, you wrote:
> Dear Mr. Benoit Gregoire,
>
> 	I followed the Slashdot discussion on your "State of Gnucash" report and I
> wish to respond.
>
> 	I just trashed a lengthy email to you, so I am rewriting the message in a
> brief form. Please ask me to expand or discuss something if you are
> interested in my comments.
>
> 	First, I saw an online donations system at Linux Expo San Francisco this
> month. The url is http:www.affero.com. This might be a useful tool to
> receive small donations to GnuCash.

We are not eligible, it requires a registered non-profit organisation.  (It 
could be done off course, but there doesn't seem to be much interest for 
now).  We will however setup other means to donate very soon.

> 	I would suggest the donation scheme of affero should be articulated, and
> create labeled donations with projects, purposes and timelines individually
> thought out.

We will see how general donations work, if the amount justifies it, we will do 
just that.

> 	From your State of Gnucash report, I felt that an important writer and
> thinker that might be worth revisiting is Peter Drucker. Back in the 60's
> and 70's he wrote some forceful and strengthening books that might be a
> source of organizing ideas that will help GnuCash forge itself into the
> organization and team that it's intrinsic value can accommodate.

Two organisations build around gnucash have already died.  I don't think most 
people involved would consider that the timing is right to implement another  
permanent structure.

> 	---
>
> 	I felt a lot of sympathy for Slashdot posters who described frustruation
> and failure at installing GnuCash. The term used on Slashdot is "dependency
> hell". I have this problem in connection with Lyx. A wonderful word
> processor. I can't bring it up on Red Hat 8.0.
>
> 	An example of another leading package that has solved the dependency
> problem is Zope. The Zope "binary" bundles an entire copy of Python into a
> subdirectory. The result is Zope downloads and installs and runs like a
> charm.
>
> 	One step for GnuCash would be to provide an all dependencies resolved type
> tar file.

In our case, most of the perceived dependency hell is coming from gnome 
libraries.  There isn't much we can do besides working with distribution 
maintainers.  Bundling gnome is simply impossible, among other reasons 
because parts of it are already installed on most systems.

> 	At the same Linux expo I saw bootable Linux CDs. These are not just toys
> to be bundled in LinuxFormat newbie magazines. They have a huge amount of
> space and a CD can easily host a huge bundle of software.
>
> 	Consider the directions possible with a GnuCash bootable CD: You could get
> worldwide distribution through LinuxFormat magazine. The CD could be
> signed, checksummed and equipped with a complete set of helpfiles, browser,
> development tools, archives, test data, and so on. Doesn't the 600 megabyte
> size of a CD provide quite a bit of space for a complete GnuCash
> development platform?
>
> 	A bootable CD could form the basis for a Certified, tested, consistent
> program that is a completely separate item from the client data. It can be
> signed, linked to CVS, etc.

Well, that may or may not be a workable business model.  But as I said, I 
think most developers don't want to explore this route for now.


-- 
Benoit Grégoire
http://step.polymtl.ca/~bock/