GnuCash and Swedish accounting legislation

[Colin Law]

On 23 January 2016 at 21:00, Mike or Penny Novack <mpnovack at mtdata.com> wrote:
> On 1/23/2016 4:46 AM, Draug wrote:
>>
>> I have come to realize that GnuCash can't be used according to the Swedish
>> Account Standards Boards interpretation of the Swedish accounting
>> legislation, which unfortunately forces me to use some proprietary
>> alternative that will increase my overhead expenses. Hopefully the lawmakers
>> will come to understand technology some day.
>
> But I think you are still not understanding what some of us are saying.
>
> WHAT "proprietary software alternative" (that you would buy and run on your
> computer) do you think I, for one, would not be able to alter?
>
> What exactly is the Swedish Standard Board saying? That the software has
> only to be secure against LEGAL tampering? << by the usual license
> agreements for proprietary software not even legal for me to look at the
> software (disassemble it), run under control of a monitor to find exactly
> where it does things like password checking, etc. ---- people like myself
> can hand edit machine language >>

I believe the problem is that the law is, proverbially, an ass.  I
believe it says that the software used must not allow the user to edit
the data.  You know that is stupid and I know it is stupid and any IT
professional (or amateur) in the world knows that is stupid, but that
is the way it is.  So in order for gnucash to be used it must not
allow the user to simply edit a transaction.  The law does not say
that there must be no way of editing the data, just that, as normally
used, it must not allow it.  So I believe that, for example, an option
when making a new file to specify that it must run in non-editable
mode might well suffice.  It would be necessary, of course, that the
user could not (from within the s/w) re-enable editing.  If that were
not enough then possibly a compile option would be required.

Colin