Operation Sugar-Daddy

[David J Patrick]

While I feel that gnuCash is the state-of-the-art personal finance
package, for linux, I understand that not everyone (including myself) is
entirely happy it. I also understand the frustrations that that (heroic)
core development team must be experiencing; a LOT of work has gone into
it, and continues to go into it. gnuCash is constantly compared to
proprietary Winders applications that had a huge head start, are
designed for vendor lock-in, and have thousands of times more
development resources ($$$). The development team is also suffering from
inadequacies of underlying software technologies, beyond their control.
And STILL they soldier on, incrementally improving this labour of love.

That said, personal / business management software is arguably THE
gateway application, for linux. For the majority of Windoze users (and
that is the majority of computer users) money management is the most
important use of their computer. Without an easy to use, easy to install
financial app, that equals the usability and feature set found in
M$Money and Quicken/QuickBooks, there is NO WAY they will (or should)
switch to linux. For everything else (browsing, email, IM, music,
graphics) there are applications that equal or better the proprietary
counterparts. gnuCash is so close we can taste it, but to expect the
core dev team to bring it the rest of the way, for free, in their spare
time, just because it's important, is unreasonable.

The lack of a mature, feature rich, financial app is THE barrier to
widespread linux adoption. I think the huge companies sinking billions
into linux would recognize that fact, and gnuCashs success would be
their success. Conversely, gnuCashs failure would negatively affect all
those with a vested interest in open source software. If this case were
properly presented to the right people in the companies at the crest of
the linux wave, I'm sure that we could find a long term sponsor. Let's
put together the documents (where gC is now, where it needs to go, what
resources would be required, what benefits to the sponsor, what
limitations, timelines etc.) and make a list of potential candidate
companies, find the appropriate contacts, make the proposal and FIND A
SUGAR-DADDY !!

djp