Testing reports

Phil Longstaff phil.longstaff at yahoo.ca
Wed Apr 18 19:53:34 EDT 2012


It's "free" as in freedom, not "free" as in beer.  Always has been.  Maybe not understood that way


________________________________
 From: Colin Scott <gnucash at double-bars.net>
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; gnucash at double-bars.net 
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 4:46:00 PM
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
_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user at gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user at gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

--
*Included Files:*
am2file:001-HTML_Message.html


More information about the gnucash-user mailing list