Before I start, Derek - I'm not knocking anyone for the fantastic effort that everyone has put fourth to bring GC to the point where it is today, yourself included. It's the only OpenSource accounting package that stands a chance of competing with the likes of Quicken or Money. To that end, to you and all the people who have contributed code, documentation, help, and other resources up to this point to GC, my hat's off to you. If we were in a room together, I would want to shake your hand along with the many others who have brought GC to the level of usability and reliability it's at today.
One of the things I learned both as a volunteer and in business is that leaders need to build teams where needs exist. Those teams need administrators, recruiters, and workers. Members of those teams will benefit by building teams of their own as well so that the load is shared across many people. It seems to me that we have a lot of users that would love to contribute in some way but aren't programmers or don't have enough time to dive deep into the code. I'm willing to help build a team of people who would do coordinated testing if one doesn't exist. Would that help? I see this team as a set of volunteers who would often build pre-release software on their systems then use features that have been updated recently along with testing other major components. I've already seen a number of people in this DL doing that.
To answer your frustration - Am I able to contribute code someday? Depending on how soon I'm able to locate a new income stream to replace the one that I just lost, the amount of time I may be able to offer until then is going to be minimal. Even for a period of time afterward, I will be learning and will need to sink just about all my efforts into that new source. Does that mean that I don't care about how GNUCash does? Not in the least. Do I want to contribute code? You bet I do. I just have to handle first things furst, much like I'm sure you do. I'm also sure that you can understand that a person can't work on projects for free all his or her life and not sustain an income of some sort.
Of late, you and others have seen me become vocal about release process improvement. Notice that the emphasis is on the process and not the person. Derek - I think you're doing a great job (even if it is without pay) and I'm sure that others will agree with me on that. What I'm trying to help us all focus on is stepping back for a few moments and taking an honest look at how code goes "public" or to the "blessed" designation of "stable release."
Derek - I am willing to donate time to look at the processes we (and I do mean we - I consider myself a part of the team not only as a user, but also as a tester and programmer) utilize to get GC to release. Part of what I do outside this group is process improvement analysis and management. If the development team doesn't want to do anything with the comments I'm offering, that's fine. It doesn't diminish their value in any way or mean that we shouldn't look at them. If the team consciously decides together not to make changes, that's fine with me. There are times where that will not only be appropriate, but necessary. On the other hand, if we just brush things off without discussion, we may miss valuable insights, no matter what the source is. I don't want to come across as someone who thinks he's better than others. I'm sure that anyone who is familiar with process improvement could come up with some ideas, some may be the same as mine, some would be different. Some would even disagree with my suggestions, and that's fine with me too. No matter how good GC is, how good its volunteer developers are, how good the volunteer testers are, or any other part of the team that brings GC to the general public is, there is room for improvement because we're normal people.
On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 09:31, Derek Atkins wrote:
Kevin, Are you willing to donate time and code to help fix it? If not, then frankly I don't want to hear this kind of response. We are _NOT_ Quicken or Money. We do _NOT_ have a team of tens, let alone hundreds, of developers and testers. We are _NOT_ paid for our time and effort. So, yes, half-baked code does make it through the "process". Tough. We're doing the best we can given the limited resources we have. Based on user experience so far, SXes have clearly _never_ worked right. But that alone does not warrant holding back a release. SXes are an extraneous feature, and we can easily tell users "don't use them yet." There were enough another other fixes completed to warrant a 1.8.2. Hopefully the SX code can be fixed for 1.8.3, but that depends on getting code. The SX author is busy with real life (as are ALL of us), and frankly I don't blame him for not being very active in Gnucash -- it doesn't pay his salary. Waiting would have meant waiting indefinitely, and that's NOT ok. Open Source is not perfect. The reason it's better than closed-source is NOT because it's free. The reason it's better is because it can leverage the help of hundreds of developers, each working on small improvements. Well, I'm sorry, put up or shut up. Either provide some code, be one of those people making gnucash better, or stop complaining. -derek, who's had a very bad day, and it's not even noon yet Kevin Benton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > All - we released 1.8.2 knowing that SX's were broken yet advertised it > as a new feature? Seems to me we should have held off the 1.8.2 release > for the full SX fix. As I've said before, I'm not trying to bring up > things to make it seem I'm just complaining, but giving everyone a sense > of how a customer might feel if this kind of "feature" were released in > Quicken or Money. Seems to me this feature should be turned off by > default until fixed. > > On Mon, 2003-03-10 at 20:28, Derek Atkins wrote: > > > The Net Assets is calculated the same way, but only for accounts > > denoted in a particular commodity. If you have stock accounts, > > you can change the net-assets toolbar to show those particular > > commodities. > > > > Be careful with the SXes -- there are some problems when converting > > from Scheduled to Real transaction. > > > > -derek > > > > "W. Scott Wilburn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > I apologize if this has already discussed. Please refer me to the > > > relevant archives if so. (I looked through the last few months.) > > > > > > I recently switched from 1.6.6 to 1.8.2 and simply opened my old file with > > > the new version. > > > > > > In 1.6.6, the 'Net Assets' value displayed in the Accounts Status Bar > > > appeared to be > > > > > > net_assets = total_of_asset_accounts - total_of_liability_accounts > > > > > > with equity, income, and expense accounts ignored. This seemed sensible. > > > > > > In 1.8.2 'Net Assets' appears to be calculated quite differently. Can > > > someone explain the difference please? > > > > > > BTW, the scheduled transaction stuff looks really good. I now have every > > > feature I need! > > > > > > Best regards, > > > Scott Wilburn > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > gnucash-user mailing list > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > http://www.gnucash.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > > -- > Kevin Benton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.gnucash.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
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-- Kevin Benton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> |
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