gnucash and Postgresql

[Robert Heller]

At Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:04:34 -0400 Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> 
> Mark Johnson <mrj001 at shaw.ca> writes:
> 
> > What is the form of this support?  It doesn't seem to be under active 
> > development.
> 
> email?  I dunno, I've never had a problem with it personally.
> It looks like the user list is active (albeit low volume).  The
> dev list had a bunch of spam, but that's been fixed recently.
> Yes, the last commit was in December, 2005, but that could mean
> that there's been no bugs.  The bug database and tracker all
> report empty.

Right.  There is some (silly) notion, usually amongst non-developers,
the goes around the internet that a project is 'considered' dead if
there is no 'active development' (eg a cvs commit every other day or
some nonsense).  *Sometimes* a package achieves a state a effective
'perfection': no outstanding bugs, no outstanding feature requests.  It
is rare, but it does in fact happen.  And when it does happen it is
common for the developers to kick back and take a well deserved break. 
Or go work on something else more pressing.

> 
> > The project is shown as still being in beta.  Suppose we run into a 
> > bug?  Will it get fixed?  Will we have to fix it ourselves?  Do we want 
> > to base a backend on beta software?  Do you feel it is sufficiently 
> > stable/debugged to be used despite that beta label?
> 
> Huh?  "shown as still being in beta"???  And you believe everything
> you see on the Internet?  Their CVS commits list stopped working.
> If you actually LOOKED at their CVS tree you'd notice that there
> have been changes made as recently as six weeks ago (mid May?)
> 
> So, I would say that yes, it's still supported, and I feel the
> "beta label" is just someone not going into SF to actually change
> it.  The fact that it's "0.8.x" is irrelevant.  QOF, which we
> depend on, is still 0.6!
> 

One of the great things about open source software is that *even if the
developers* have dropped this project, *anyone* else can step in if
needed.  If the developers have in fact dropped it and the GnuCash
developers find a bug, we really don't *need* the original developers
-- the source code is there and a fix can be worked on as needed.

> > Mark
> 
> -derek
> 

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
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