A response from the trenches

[David Blomquist]

On Sat, 2005-04-23 at 21:08 -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:
> John Sowden <jsowden at americansentry.net> writes:
> 
> > This has been going on for a while.
> >
> > I agree that gnu-cash does not provide basic accounting features that a 
> > business might expect.  The problem is that gnu-cash is a personal accounting 
> 
> Um, I'd like to know what "basic accounting features" gnucash does not
> provide "that a business might expect".  I've been running my business
> finances on gnucash for three years.

I have been using gnucash for 3 years now and I have been using it for
my business for the past 1 1/2 years.  I came from quickbooks and I can
tell you that there is not a single feature that I personally miss from
quickbooks and that there is definitely no "basic accounting feature"
that is missing from gnucash.  When I left quickbooks, I found a lot of
freedom in gnucash.  I wasn't charged for exporting and emailing
invoices for one thing.  I also prefer the ledger system in gnucash to
the equivalent in quickbooks.

> Well, it's certainly no way to motivate me.  I'm actually more
> motivated by a cry for help than a "you suck and here's why!" or even
> a "I'm leaving you and here's why."  

Statements such as the original poster's, and some of those that
followed, have absolutely no constructive value whatsoever but the
people who write these posts are often too arrogant and self-centered to
understand this concept.

Open source free software development is a community based process.
People in the community develop, test, report bugs, write documentation,
post to mailing lists (in a constructive way) and donate money to make
the software better for everybody.  If a user of the software cannot
manage to do any of these things, he is not helping the software to
improve nor is he helping anyone else to improve their experience with
the software.

> In fact, this whole thread has turned me off.  Honestly I've barely
> read it because it's been too painful. 

I had the same reaction and I'm not even a gnucash dev.  If the critics
out have not already read this somewhere...

THE GNUCASH PROJECT IS UNDERFUNDED AND UNDERSTAFFED!

This is why every possible useful feature has not been implemented yet
and why every bug has not been fixed.  Why don't you critics either stop
complaining and find a way to help out or just quietly move on.

I wouldn't blame you if you did start charging for your help, Derek.  I
would like you to know, however, that I very much appreciate all of your
(and the other devs and contributers) hard work on gnucash; it has
finally enabled me to run my business financial operations (and
consequently, all business computing operations) on open source
software.

Sincerely,

-- 
David Blomquist <dbl at tentra.com>
Tentra