Hi;
I have some thoughts here that somewhat back up what Erik has said but may
help clarify things and avoid some misunderstandings. I am hoping this
will help describe the problems involved and what LedgerSMB needs going
forward, as well as roles of packagers etc.
First I want to say that yes, we are always working on making the
installation easier. This is needed. We all know this. If people,
particularly consultants can't install the software, they won't and we lose
out on market share. I think we are all on the same page here. Solving
technical problems relating to installation is a priority but of course we
need reports of those problems which are detailed enough for us to
understand what is the problem. Packagers can solve some of these problems
and I think that was what Erik was mentioning above. Some more problems
meed to be addressed by the developers. One thing we have been looking at
addressing at Efficito (as a contribution to the software) is better error
handling when the database doesn't get created properly. These sorts of
problems need to be solved as a general part of the user experience,
particularly as a way of courting consultants and developers.
And if all you want is something to handle basic accounting from one
system, that's good enough but if you want a program to run your business,
accessible for a bunch of people, that only gets you started. We really
don't want to automate tampering with your PostgreSQL setup and so there
are a lot of things that are outside our software and our responsibility.
There may be room for people to put together simple installation bundles,
but those will only be applicable to a portion of our userbase. It also
won't address all the other things that go into management, like deciding
how wide to open things up security-wise or the like. It is not an area I
want to get into but I would be happy to provide advice to anyone trying.
It also doesn't really get you started setting up the software to handle
all of your needs. This requires sitting and thinking through the
workflows, seeing what is required, and so forth.
I got involved in Efficito not because of the difficulty in installation. I
charged and still charge a low flat rate for installation and setup. But
the thing is providing a really good hosting service means providing those
services that go into the setup, installation, and more importantly
maintenance that are well beyond the scope of LedgerSMB per se. Want
someone to make sure is something really bad happens (oops, we dropped the
database!) we can restore the data to the point shortly before that
happened? Want someone to talk you through the security considerations of
set up and set things up as securely as you can manage? These are outside
the LedgerSMB program's control but they are the most important and complex
parts of managing the software.
So long story short, (TL;DR), yes, we are working on making the setup
easier. There are, however, hard limits. Some of those limits we are up
against. Some others we are not. We will keep working.
--
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor
lock-in.
http://www.efficito.com/learn_more.shtml
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