Re: [libreplanet-discuss] TurboCash

[David Loyall]

Hello.

NB I am not familiar with the details of the TurboCASH situation so my
commentary is based only on the content of the wikipedia page and my
own experience with small, windows-only software that has migrated to
free licenses.

Sounds like TurboCASH just needs time and patches.  The developers and
the community should not be punished for their dependency on non-free
software.  It sounds like they aspire to eliminate those legacy
dependencies.

There was this non-free game for PC called Descent, back in the mid
nineties.  (It wasn't called a non-free game back then, it was just
called a cool game!)  At some point, the source was re-licensed as
free software, but not the artwork, and the build depended on non-free
compilers.  For a year or so, folks who had access to those compilers
were releasing binaries, new builds of the game, and all along they
were also working to make it build under gcc.  Long story short: they
eventually succeeded and many derivative projects have been created,
including http://packages.debian.org/unstable/d2x-rebirth .

Free Software Supporters are one thing, and Fans are another.
TurboCASH has Fans.  Many of them might not be radicals.  But some of
them must be, because they've declared their intent by re-licensing
the application under GPL.

Ok, now I've looked at http://sourceforge.net/projects/turbocash/ and
their wiki and I see that they have a very long path ahead of them. :P

Quiliro, if you chose another accounting product over TurboCASH due to
some failure on their part to adhere to free-software principles or
some technical issue, please describe your choice in the form of a bug
report: http://sourceforge.net/p/turbocash/bugs/

If you would like help with the language of the bug report, contact me
directly or via this mailing list.

Cheers,
--Hobbes


On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 11:39 PM, Quiliro Ordóñez Baca
<quiliro@congresolibre.org> wrote:
>
>
> El dom 19 ene 2014 00:17:21 ECT, Mike Gerwitz escribió:
>> On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 12:07:27AM -0500, Quiliro Ordóñez Baca wrote:
>>> What do you think about this?
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboCASH#Criticism
>>
>> There is unfortunately no reference describing the situation; could you
>> summarize it for us and maybe provide some details about the environment
>> needed to compile the software?
>>
>> Some clarification is also needed regarding this line:
>>
>>   TurboCASH has also faced criticism from some open-source advocates, as
>>   commercial applications are required to compile TurboCASH.
>>
>> ``Commercial'' does not imply non-free, though I suspect that this is the
>> case here?
>>
>
> That is exactly what I am Trying to find out. The idea is to check if
> it requires non-free software for running.
> --
> Saludos libres,
> Quiliro Ordóñez
> 600 8579
>