Operation Sugar-Daddy

[Rod Engelsman]

David J Patrick wrote:
> 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.

+1

> 
> 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.

My experience exactly.

> 
> 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 !!
> 

+1

I entered my personal experiment with Linux with high hopes. After all I 
had been using Mozilla and OpenOffice.org for some time, and I knew they 
were available. The one hang-up was the financial app. I could find *no* 
cross-platform open finance app that fit the bill. It's crucial... it's 
my money for God's sake.

At this point I am looking at either KMymoney, running MSMoney under 
wine, or just chucking it all and going back to Winders.

Rod