Chart of accounts

[John Layman]

Actually, I would contend that the feature you're characterizing as
unimportant ranks close to being condicio sine qua non for an accounting
package. For as much as I am glad GnuCash is available, it is far from being
a polished, well-packaged piece of work like Open Office.

As for your snarky  this-is-how-freeware-works comment, I would beg to
differ.  We're talking here about one sense in which freeware does NOT work
particularly well.  And, as for the sense you meant, no one coerces freeware
volunteerism.  I tire of hearing  comments like yours around here.  Truth to
be told, the economics of freeware may not stand up all that well to close
scrutiny.  I have no knowledge of the individuals who donate effort to the
GC project, but broadly speaking, there is reason to suspect that labor
"donated" to freeware efforts is not infrequently bootlegged on some
unwitting employer's dime.  Freeware continues to be an iffy proposition
just on the economics of it.

One other point to consider about "how freeware works" is that truly
successful software has an actual user base OTHER than the developers.  If a
product has no actual customers, can it actually be said to work?  For some
classes of software the user base is highly technical, but GnuCash does not
fall into that category, and it can be expected to have a majority of users
who lack the chops to pitch in on the effort.  Some users (like myself) may
have the chops, but have their hands completely full running a business.  If
you think GnuCash is a let's-every-man-jack-pitch-in deal, you have
seriously lost touch with reality.

Anyway, it's swell that you have the time to donate, Lincoln.  Keep it up.
But it ain't no cause for self-congratulation.  Quite frankly, as a
greybeard who was part of the software product biz before there even was
such a thing, I found your message to James rather an embarrassment.



-----Original Message-----
From: gnucash-user-bounces+john.layman=laymanandlayman.com at gnucash.org
[mailto:gnucash-user-bounces+john.layman=laymanandlayman.com at gnucash.org] On
Behalf Of Lincoln A Baxter
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2011 6:55 PM
To: James Wilde
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: Chart of accounts

Hey James,...

On Fri, 2011-08-26 at 23:37 +0200, James Wilde wrote:
> On Aug 26, 2011, at 23:24 , David Carlson wrote:
> 
> >> <big snip>
> 
> > If the goal is a complete list of accounts with no data, how about 
> > exporting the list first, opening the empty data file and creating 
> > an Account Summary Report on the empty file?  There would still be 
> > zero amounts, but they could then be more easily filtered out.
> 
> I've seen this suggestion twice.  Excuse me, but doesn't it strike anybody
that this is a very clumsy workaround for something that should be a click
on a menu choice?  You give a chart of accounts to every newcomer to the
accounting department so they will quickly learn about the structure of the
accounting system.  You give it to every person who has to allocate expenses
when (s)he approves invoices for payment.  But you don't necessarily want
any of these people to see the balances on the accounts, so the account
report is not an alternative.
> 

This is a little over the top. This is FREE software that is work of people
who DONATE their time to creating and maintaining this software.
If you really care, you will "scratch your itch", and contribute patches,
that implement the functionality you want.

Alternatively, you are not technically competent to do that, you could write
a spec, file it as an enhancement request, and then offer to pay someone to
implement it.  If enough other people want the capability, perhaps those
people could pool what they are willing to pay to make it happen.  When the
amount is large enough, a developer will change his priorities to collect
"the ransome."

This is how free software works.

All that said, this does not strike me as a very important feature, and it
probably strikes most others the same way.

:-)

Lincoln


> //James
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