[Openpetraorg-weekly] Update for the last 4 weeks until the middle of February

[Timotheus P. <tim...@po...>]

== What happened in the past weeks ==
* Vista Support has been added to the Remote Client installer and the patchtool.
* The first production annual gift receipts have been printed for a
little charity, using OpenPetra. This means gift matching and letter
printing is now part of OpenPetra.
* OpenPetra now works with the popular MySQL database as well as it
did already with PostgreSQL and SQLite.
* Migration between databases is now easily possible, by exporting all
data to a text file, and importing again. This works across different
database types. So that means you can start experimenting with your
standalone version of OpenPetra with the default SQLite installation,
and when you need it, you can subscribe to a hosted OpenPetra solution
(using PostgreSQL or MySQL) and upload your existing data, and it will
work the other way round as well, of course.
* Ongoing discussions with OM about the future and direction of
OpenPetra are still ongoing and taking time.
* Much time was spent on another project with the local office, which
is still with the old 4GL code.
* Please have a look at the article on the personal blog of Timotheus
covering the topic of "A look at charities and Open Source ERP
software" (http://tpokorra.blogspot.com/2010/02/look-at-charities-and-open-source-erp.html).
It also includes a number of interesting links to other websites.
* The twelfth Preview of OpenPetra has just been released.

== What did not happen in that time ==
* Well, the end of the original project time is drawing near, and the
project is nowhere near we originally wanted it to be. We cannot even
release a version 0.1 with good confidence.

== What should happen in the next weeks ==
* Release version 0.1 to bring the past 12 months to a good closure.
* Discussions with OM about the future and direction of the project.
We are looking for other sponsors of the project or another way of
income to sponsor the development of OpenPetra.
* Prepare in some way for the ICCM in the Netherlands in March, which
Christian and Timotheus will visit.
* Improve the documentation of the website and in the wiki, provide
and properly present a list of things that currently work and which
things should be implemented in the near future.