Re: Are There Plans For A GUI Overhaul?
Hi John, Indeed it is a shame, and I regret causing the discord and suspicion. Please accept my apologies. Thanks for your insight and the link to the SFC. I shall get in touch with them. The only other way of engaging with the GnuCash project without the need of either a contract or management oversight is to create a fork. It would therefore obviously be completely optional whether the dev team adopted any of the changes. But if the fork development matched the Gnucash roadmap and project guidelines, the chances of merger would presumably increase. However the key to enabling this to succeed is the user base, and as a fork, the user base starts from scratch. Regards, Paul. On 18/10/16 02:24, John Ralls wrote: Paul, Had you approached us that way originally you would have generated much less discord and suspicion. It's a shame you instead chose to start off the way you did. I've explained more than once to you that no-one in the GnuCash team is interested in managing anyone. What you're proposing now is just another layer of the same thing: Sure, you'd contract with and project-manage the developers and documentors, but we'd still have to contract with you. Incidentally, there's another wrinkle to this which makes it impossible for GnuCash to contract with anyone, but thinking of it reminds me of an entity that might be interested in working with you and helping you flesh out what you need to develop your business, maybe even to help you understand the prospective market for it. The wrinkle is that there's no legal entity called GnuCash, so it's not possible for GnuCash to execute a contract with anyone. We have discussed a couple of times signing up with The Software Freedom Conservancy (https://sfconservancy.org/) to cover that angle but decided that at present we didn't have a need to. I suggest that you get in contact with them; they work internationally and have a good lawyer on their board (who used to be the counsel for the Gnome Foundation and so has a solid grasp of the legal needs of FOSS projects). I think you'll make more progress with your goals that way than with any individual project. Regards, John Ralls ___ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: Are There Plans For A GUI Overhaul?
> On Oct 18, 2016, at 8:13 AM, Paul Phillips wrote: > > Hi John, > > Indeed it is a shame, and I regret causing the discord and suspicion. Please > accept my apologies. > > Thanks for your insight and the link to the SFC. I shall get in touch with > them. > > The only other way of engaging with the GnuCash project without the need of > either a contract or management oversight is to create a fork. It would > therefore obviously be completely optional whether the dev team adopted any > of the changes. But if the fork development matched the Gnucash roadmap and > project guidelines, the chances of merger would presumably increase. > > However the key to enabling this to succeed is the user base, and as a fork, > the user base starts from scratch. > Paul, There are forks and then there are Github forks. The latter is one usual way for "outside" developers and documentors to contribute, submitting their work through a Github pull request (which is a bit different and much easier to use than the traditional git email pull request used by the Linux project. The other kind of fork is what happened with Open Office a few years ago: Unhappy with the way Oracle was managing the product, a large chunk of the development team took the code base and created a new product, Libre Office. I think that's what would have to happen with a "commercialized" GnuCash: The "commercial" team would have to create a new product to work on to guarantee that the paid-for work actually gets released in a product. I've put "commercial" in scare-quotes because the new product would still be limited by the provisions of the GPL and the GnuCash project would be able to merge any changes that they liked into the Free version. Both because of that and the limitations of the GPL the "commercial" entity would have to find some other way of monetizing the product; that's normally done on open source projects by selling support. IMO that's a hard nut to crack: Developers, documentors, and managers are expensive and the "commercial" entity would need a pretty hefty cash-flow; a reasonable-sized team might run as much as $1M/year once overhead is included. Regards, John Ralls ___ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: Are There Plans For A GUI Overhaul?
On 18/10/2016 09:56, John Ralls wrote: > >> On Oct 18, 2016, at 8:13 AM, Paul Phillips wrote: >> >> Hi John, >> >> Indeed it is a shame, and I regret causing the discord and suspicion. >> Please accept my apologies. >> >> Thanks for your insight and the link to the SFC. I shall get in touch with >> them. >> >> The only other way of engaging with the GnuCash project without the need of >> either a contract or management oversight is to create a fork. It would >> therefore obviously be completely optional whether the dev team adopted any >> of the changes. But if the fork development matched the Gnucash roadmap and >> project guidelines, the chances of merger would presumably increase. >> >> However the key to enabling this to succeed is the user base, and as a fork, >> the user base starts from scratch. >> > > Paul, > > There are forks and then there are Github forks. The latter is one usual way > for "outside" developers and documentors to contribute, submitting their work > through a Github pull request (which is a bit different and much easier to > use than the traditional git email pull request used by the Linux project. > > The other kind of fork is what happened with Open Office a few years ago: > Unhappy with the way Oracle was managing the product, a large chunk of the > development team took the code base and created a new product, Libre Office. > I think that's what would have to happen with a "commercialized" GnuCash: The > "commercial" team would have to create a new product to work on to guarantee > that the paid-for work actually gets released in a product. > > I've put "commercial" in scare-quotes because the new product would still be > limited by the provisions of the GPL and the GnuCash project would be able to > merge any changes that they liked into the Free version. Both because of that > and the limitations of the GPL the "commercial" entity would have to find > some other way of monetizing the product; that's normally done on open source > projects by selling support. IMO that's a hard nut to crack: Developers, > documentors, and managers are expensive and the "commercial" entity would > need a pretty hefty cash-flow; a reasonable-sized team might run as much as > $1M/year once overhead is included. Drifting a bit I've wondered more than once about the relationship between GnuCash and KDE's KMyMoney https://kmymoney.org/ looks like that was forked -- Wm ___ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
