EDIT >>>>>>>>>>> The project has moved to https://github.com/benreu/PyGtk-Posting
***** HISTORY
When I started a business back in 2008, I wished for a way to keep track of what I paid for items, what customer owe me, and what I owe vendors. Then I learned that is what they call an accounting system. And of course I wanted somewhere to keep my order numbers, what shelf the products are on and so forth. Again the accounting system.
***** RESEARCH
I tried QuickBooks, but quickly had 2 problems: No Linux support, and if you run an old version of QuickBooks the tax features are blocked because of the tax number assignment (something I still do not understand). Out the door went QuickBooks. I tried PostBooks, GnuCash, Tryton, Adempiere, Compiere, Fakturama, HLedger, SubLedger, Odoo, LedgerSMB, JFire, and on and on... For several months, I used GnuAccounting which was the best I could find (for my case) even though it was based on EU standards. Jochen Staerk the main creator of GnuAccounting still has my respect.
***** ANALYSIS
I finally figured out what I was looking for:
Standalone GUI (not web browser based)
Local server (not internet based)
Open server (not a database I have no access to) This was my main gripe against Tryton and Postbooks. They have the database hidden. If I wreck the database, it is my fault, is it not?
Community driven (not run by people that do not even use it) This seems ridiculous, but a lot of open source accounting systems are created solely for selling support or whatever, and the creators use some other personal/cloud software to do their own accounting.
Easy to use with the source code available.
As you can see by this time, the list of requirements was pretty long. I found quite a number of projects with the requirements stated, but they were all abandoned. Why? I wondered silently to myself. There were no answers to be found.
***** ACTION
So, I decided to tackle it myself. I learned GTK. I learned Python. I learned SQL. I learned how double entry accounting works. I learned proper database design. I read all the open information there was to find (thanks everybody). And I am still learning. In a quarter year of spare time and losing sleep, I was printing invoices. In a year, I had a accounting system that way exceeded my expectations. Still rough around the edges, but still better than I figured for a year of work. In that year, I spoke to my friends about it. I posted on several forums. People were curious and asked questions. One by one, they lost interest and the SourceForge download statistics dropped again. The few people that helped me as far as they did, seemed to have to be bribed (almost) to help.
***** MORE RESEARCH
So I started doing more research and ran across numerous posts where people were designing their own accounting systems for Linux. At that point the light finally dawned on me. Software for Windows/Mac is so hard to develop, people would rather buy than make their own. On Linux, it is so easy to create software, most people make their own and the rest (non tech people) buy a commercial product of some form or other. Open source projects like the Linux kernel or PostgreSQL are another scenario, because they are the low level tools everybody needs to create their own software.
***** FINAL DECISION
Since I put some time in releasing each version of PyGtk Posting, and nobody else benefits from it, I decided to quit releasing Posting. No, it will still be open source, and it will still be developed. But you will no longer find the latest version here. Should you want the latest version, or maybe you were following this project and would like to continue following it, or maybe you find this project in the year 2037 and find it interesting... Just drop me a line pygtk dot posting at gmail dot com and mention PyGtk Posting and I will be in touch with you. In the meantime, I will continue wearing out keyboards:)
P.S. If you happen to have an opinion why PyGtk Posting does not have general user appeal, I would appreciate your opinion also.
Reuben
