On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 1:40 PM, Ed W <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > I won't presume to speak for the core devs, but I gather the limiting > factor is time availability for the people with commit rights. > > > > And to be clear I am hoping to rent 1-2+ months of full time > development from 1+ core developer. If this doesn't buy a substantial > advance in functionality then I'm paying the wrong person... > > > Well one issue you are going to run into is cost. I don't know about > Chris but for us to do that you are going to have to come up with (even > with a discounted rate) 20k+. That is with a significant discount off of > our normal rate. > > > What currency? USD? Seems not unreasonable (is that per month or for two > months?) > > Given that I am happy to fund around $10K, but perhaps 50% of that is held > back to pay for some less general stuff which will be more useful for me (in > particular I would like a credit card terminal feature in the software), I > really don't see why a few other business won't stump up some sensible money > to sponsor some serious development and meet that number?
I will be following up with you off-list regarding what my business can do for you. For better or worse, however, I think that a lot of this is going to have to wait for 1.4 for planning reasons (rather than resource reasons). What you need to understand is that 1.3 is going to be a MAJOR step forward. In it we see a wholely new architecture and way of developing the software, a new permissions and security system, and a lot of fundamental changes under the hood which allow for LedgerSMB to be viable in a much wider range of markets. With these deep changes come a number of QA headaches. However, we have deliberately avoided moving too much of the existing financial logic to the new framework so that the QA is not overwhelming. Among the areas which are in LedgerSMB /trunk (pre-1.3) at the moment: * New architecture for new code * Full separation of duties and bulk processing system (vouchers/batches, and draft/approval of transactions) * Move of all template pathways to use TemplateToolkit. * Strict db-level permissions enforcement and the move to pgsql roles for user access control. * Hold status for invoices * Capability to export many reports to Excel and OpenOffice Calc, as well as CSV. * Entirely redesigned contact management (multiple addresses per customer or vendor, customer can also be vendor, etc). * New payment interfaces for better user friendliness and better handling of heavy workloads Among reqirements for 1.3 yet to do: * User management interface (for permissions etc) * DB creation/update wizard * Reconcilliation interface w/possibility of integrating with bank-supplied files. This was a deliberate choice in terms of avoiding (though not entirely) redesigning the AR/AP/GL transaction and invoice interfaces because this just makes QA that much harder. We have started to redesign these, but those changes will not be included until after the changes above are well tested. What I am trying to say is that patience is also appreciated and that we haven't forgotten about the other parts of the program. By 2.0, I expect there will be no code left from SQL-Ledger. > At least where I live it cost me around $1,000 to buy *one* copy of MS > Office Std and Vista Ultimate (long story, don't ask why). My accounting > bill as a small company is north of $2K. My friend who has a larger 10 > person business pays around $12K/year for accountancy fees. > > If this software can save me 30 minutes a day then it's worth paying for > because I will get that back in less than one year. > > I hope that we will see 10-20 other businesses look to fund $2K+ each (is > that really so much for an unlimited licence for a bit of software? It's > one decent laptop? Sage would cost me more than that just in the first > year...), which would fund some substantial development time. I would like > to think that we will see businesses contribute around $40K+ which we can > turn into some serious development...? What I would suggest is that everyone who is in a similar boat and wants to help contact people who are willing to do such development. My firm does this, as does Josh's. If the firm does not have people on the core team, that is fine too-- we can work with them. However, what is likely to take the most time (not labor) is just coordination with the community, making sure that what is generally applicable is separated from that which is not, etc. > > Step up to the plate folks - I really don't see why there should be any > hesitation to chuck down some money. I think many folks get blinded by the > "free" sticker and forget that it's ok to pay to see it improved. Also I'm > not proposing "sponsorship", I want to get value for money out of *my* > investment - I expected to get an agreed amount of hours full time work on > LSMB for the money I put down (so should you)... Just for the record, I know of at least one other company that has contributed a large amount of developer time towards the project (as in code, not cash), and at least one other company which has contributed a lage amount of financial aid towards development of features they need. Just because it is not extremely visible doesn't mean that people aren't helping out. As mentioned before, I expect both of these to increase after 1.3 rather than decrease simply because the quality of code will be better. Hope this helps! Chris Travers ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php _______________________________________________ Ledger-smb-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ledger-smb-devel
