Testing reports

Dustin Henning The00Dustin at gmx.net
Wed Apr 18 16:55:49 EDT 2012


	Please...  Paying someone to modify code (labor) doesn't make the
code (before or after modification) any less free.  Just because the
software is free doesn't mean you are entitled to anyone else's labor.  The
point about a commercial package is you can go use one if you want.
Moreover, marketing generally has no input in how anything is done
Regardless of whether or not you are talking about software, marketing's job
is generally to cover up flaws and sell overpriced crap.  Free isn't
overpriced, and just because you think you see a flaw doesn't mean someone
else needs to cover it up.

-----Original Message-----
From: gnucash-user-bounces+the00dustin=gmx.net at gnucash.org
[mailto:gnucash-user-bounces+the00dustin=gmx.net at gnucash.org] On Behalf Of
Colin Scott
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 16:46
To: phil.longstaff at yahoo.ca; gnucash at double-bars.net; warlord at MIT.EDU;
turgon at mike-leone.com
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: Testing reports


> Absolutely untrue.  There have been bounty requests for features. 
>  With free software, you have a chance of having your request 
> fulfilled.  Try that with Quicken.

Hardly free software then, is it?

The point about buying a commercial package is that generally one can buy a
package covering the featuers that people are asking for in here *without*
having to pay a premium on top.  Moreover, even if the (commercial) package
doesn't meet your exact requirements, the marketing people will have worked
out the *essential* (which clearly the gnucash team have not), so they will
all be there by default, and will probably have worked out what
*combinations* of features will satisfy the greates number of users.
Gnucash fails here because it doesn't seem to understand the word
"marketing" ...

Colin

-------- Original Message --------

*Subject:* Re: Testing reports
*From:* Phil Longstaff <phil.longstaff at yahoo.ca>
*To:* "gnucash at double-bars.net" <gnucash at double-bars.net>, "warlord at MIT.EDU"
<warlord at MIT.EDU>, "turgon at mike-leone.com" <turgon at mike-leone.com>
*CC:* "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
*Date:* Wed, 18 Apr 2012 06:28:30 -0700 (PDT)

"In other words, if you're a user of gnucash, but for whatever reason unable
to contribute code, then you're on your own."

Absolutely untrue.  There have been bounty requests for features.  With free
software, you have a chance of having your request fulfilled.  Try that with
Quicken.


________________________________
 From: Colin Scott <gnucash at double-bars.net>
To: warlord at MIT.EDU; turgon at mike-leone.com
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 8:53:00 AM
Subject: Re: Testing reports
 

> It's easy to type up an email that says "you suck, this program sucks, 
> blah de blah blah."

Actually, I think you get very few emails of that nature.  Most of the ones
I read in here are either genuine seekers of information, or genuine
suggestions for improvement.

> This is a community, and we ask everyone to join in and help raise the 
> barn.

In other words, if you're a user of gnucash, but for whatever reason unable
to contribute code, then you're on your own.  I accept that as a perfectly
valid position.  However, many other people (including, it would appear,
quite a few gnucash users) see open source and freely distributed software
slightly differently - a forgiveable mistake given how many open source
projects *are* responsive to comments and suggestions from users, and either
implement suggestions quickly, incorporate them into the development plan,
or provide good reasons why that suggestion is not appropriate.  You could
save many of your users a deal of time, effort and disappointment, and
yourselves (ie, the developers) a deal of grief in here, were the gnucash
website to contain a clear statement that change requests are not accepted.

Colin

-------- Original Message --------

*Subject:* Re: Testing reports
*From:* Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU>
*To:* Michael Leone <turgon at mike-leone.com>
*CC:* gnucash-user at gnucash.org
*Date:* Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:09:08 -0400

Michael Leone <turgon at mike-leone.com> writes:

> On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 8:07 AM, Colin Scott <gnucash at double-bars.net>
wrote:
>>
>> I sincerely hope those who control the project will give serious
consideration to my comments about a mission-statement ...
>
> Who actually controls this project? Is there someone who actual 
> dictates priorities, and a roadmap of what features will be fixed, and 
> when, and what new features are to be in the next release?

Nobody.  Some of us who have been around a long time provide architectural
guidance, but frankly I spend more time on the mailing lists and IRC
answering questions than I do coding for this project.
Developers decide what features they want to implement, or they talk hard
enough to convince other developers to work on it.

> Is there an official project leader? Is that person elected, like the 
> Debian Project Leader, perhaps from the developer pool?

No, there is not.  There have been loosly defined "lead developers" over
time, but those roles have more been self-appointed than "voted".  For
example, about a decade ago people were calling me lead developer, but that
was mostly because I was doing the vast majority of work at the time. 
Lately I would call Christian that, as he has been doing lots of work.  But
of course there have always been a cadre of developers who scratch their own
itches, and that's fine.

While this is still a community, it doesn't mean you (or anybody) can demand
anything from anyone else.  If GnuCash works for you, great.  If you want to
send your accolades, thank you!  If you want to file bug reports, bravo!  If
you want to complain without offering some constructive help, well, you get
what you pay for.  But because this is a community we DO ask everyone to
help.  Yes, we do frequently ask "where is the patch?", and the reason is
that talk is cheap.  It's easy to type up an email that says "you suck, this
program sucks, blah de blah blah."  It's much harder to write up a
constructive suggestion that not only shows the problem, but shows a way to
fix it.  But as before, developers decide what they work on, so you either
have to be very convincing in your argument or you need to do a lot of the
work yourself.  This is a community, and we ask everyone to join in and help
raise the barn.

>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-derek
--
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
      warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
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