Exploring the possibility of better NPO support in LedgerSMB

[Chris Travers]

On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 8:02 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn at sfconservancy.org>wrote:

> Chris Travers wrote at 21:22 (EDT) on Tuesday:
> > First, I have no intention of doing the Conservancy's evaluation work
> > for you.  If I gave you that impression, I sincerely apologize.
>
> There's no need to apologize, and I didn't think you'd suggested that.
>
> > Just a couple clarifications then, if once we are on the same page
> > what a "self evaluation" is there for, you still don't think it would
> > be helpful, we'll put together more general documentation and provide
> > a pointer to it.
>
> Obviously I expect we'll look at any document you prepare.  As I
> mentioned elsewhere on this list, Conservancy isn't ready to begin our
> work, in part because we're focused on fundraising, so I don't think
> we'll be able to look at anything in detail yet.
>
>
> > I further recognize the danger of appearing partial and I would
> > suggest actually inviting various open source candidates to provide
> > self evaluations.
>
> This is an interesting idea.  My first thought would be that it is
> somewhat presumptuous -- in the sense that: "Who is Conservancy to
> dictate to these projects what types of orgs they should support?"
>
> OTOH, it could save us effort, and it would be interesting to compare
> how the project sees itself vs. how someone new to the project sees it.
>
> Chris, is your thought that the same questions would be asked both on
> the self-evaluation and the one done by Conservancy, or should they be
> different?  How would they differ?
>

I think for a self evaluation the best way to go is to give the project as
much freedom as possible in volunteering information.  Maybe a brief
description of what you are doing, a link to the site for more info, and an
invitation for the project to tell you anything they think is important for
the evaluation purposes, with some optional sample questions.  Something
like:

[greeting]

We are getting ready to begin evaluating software projects for the Software
Freedom Conservancy's NPO Accounting project.  As part of this process we
are inviting projects to provide concise self-evaluations, in order to help
us determine a good fit.  If you don't want to, that's fine.  It won't
disqualify you.

Feel free to tell us what you feel we may need to know (outside of  what we
can learn from a review of your documentation and an immediate review of
your code).  If you get stuck, the following questions may be helpful but
they are there just to give you some ideas.  We'd prefer responses to be
reasonably short.  Keep in mind we are evaluating over twenty projects, so
overly long responses may not be given as much attention as shorter ones.

1.  In your understanding, what do you think is needed to support the
accounting requirements of NPO's better with your project?  Are you
interested in contributions to this end?

2.  How would you introduce your community of users and developers to an
outsider?

3.   For someone looking at the codebase for the first time, what would you
tell them to get started?  Anything in particular to do or to avoid?

[....]

-----

The idea is just an invitation for the project to introduce themselves to
you and tell you whatever they think you need to know to get started.


> --
> Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy
> _______________________________________________
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> npo-accounting at sfconservancy.org
> http://lists.sfconservancy.org/mailman/listinfo/npo-accounting
>
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