Exploring the possibility of better NPO support in LedgerSMB

[Chris Travers]

On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 5:56 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn at sfconservancy.org>wrote:

> Chris,
>
> Chris Travers wrote:
> >    I am the most active developer in the LedgerSMB project and would like
> >    to offer assistance for phase 0 evaluation of this software for a
> >    possible NPO accounting system.
>
> I really appreciate that you've joined this mailing list.  Indeed,
> LedgerSMB
> is one of the many projects on our list to evaluate as part of Phase 0 of
> the
> project, and in fact did spend 3-4 weeks evaluating LedgerSMB in 2008 along
> with many other options for Conservancy's needs.  Like all the systems I
> evaluated, I believe that five years of development certainly demands a
> fresh
> look at every option, which is why Conservancy drafted our plan to include
> Phase 0.
>

We might as well be a new project compared to our stable versions in 2008.
 Of course work on eliminating the old parts is still ongoing and may be
for a few years.

>
> At this point, the discussion is focused on building a criteria document
> and
> evaluation checklist, and just collecting the list of projects that should
> be
> evaluated, so I suspect we won't initially have many questions about
> LedgerSMB.  However, assuming the fundraising campaign is successful and
> Conservancy is able to bring in a staffer to begin the evaluation work, I
> believe that having folks from individual projects under evaluation will be
> very helpful.
>

I guess my immediate question is how can we in the LedgerSMB community (and
those in other open source accounting programs) help with the evaluation?
 On one hand I don't want it to be basically a matter of marketing our
community, but we might be able to do things like discuss how much work it
would be to take our project and make it conform with your requirements,
what the challenges are, and the like.

>
> The last thing I will add is that even the early threads on the mailing
> list
> show that there are a *lot* of accounting systems as Open Source and Free
> Software, which Conservancy was in fact aware of before launching the
> fundraising campaign.  I think your point is particularly salient when you
> say that none of the systems are currently attractive to the NPO community.


To be honest, we have *some* NPO support currently, and some users could
possibly use LedgerSMB 1.2 or 1.3 without too much trouble.  We have, for
example, some charts of accounts set up for 990 filers and some account
mappings (we support GIFI mappings used in Canada and Europe, and so this
was repurposed for this) set up for such.  The thing is, this  level of
support isn't  adequate when you move beyond the most basic use cases.

>


> But, Conservancy also doesn't want to restart from scratch unless that's
> shown clearly to be absolutely necessary.  While I don't think it will be,
> there is a lot of competition of what codebase to choose.  At some point, I
> was going to have to say this explicitly, and now is the moment: this
> project will have to make a hard decision about which codebase to use, and
> there *will* be people who are unhappy about the selection.
>

Of course.  There's another aspect here as well, which is that, quite
frankly, it isn't clear whether a single codebase is ever going to meet all
the needs of every NPO from the most basic use cases through the most
complex.    For example if you are the FSF or the SF Conservancy, you have
different needs than if you are running non-profit diabetes care in Africa
(the latter is likely to involve inventory tracking and maybe even light
manufacturing).  One question that may need to be asked is that if that is
the case, what can be done to structure the development particularly of the
evaluation docs so as to help cultivate more NPO software without the SF
conservancy's funding?

So in line with this question, I have some questions:

1.  How many NPO's are currently participating in the review of the
criteria?

2.  Would it be possible to have some sort of record (anonymous or not) of
the sort of NPO's that are likely to require specific features under
consideration?

My reasoning for the second is that there are a lot of open source
accounting programs out there but they all have somewhat different target
markets.  If you were to get an Adempiere module for NPOs for example, it
would likely be used by a very different type of NPO than would be happy
with some sort of GNU Cash NPO support.  One of the most valuable things
this project may be able to do is provide feedback for projects who want to
reach NPO markets as to what  minimally they may need to offer in order to
be viable.  So regardless of where you spend the raised money, the
evaluation process may be a good opportunity to begin engaging with

>
> I have in my mind that I'd actually like to consider the possibility of
> merging two or three of the options in some interesting way if we can find
> a
> way to do it without making the job even harder.  But, in the end, we
> certainly
> can't pick 22 different codebases to start from, and there are at least 22
> options on the list already.  Thus, we can predict that at least 19
> projects
> are going to be unhappy with the outcome.  I don't know which 19 projects
> those
> will be in advance -- so the best I can assure you is that Conservancy is
> committed to doing Phase 0 wholly in public and transparently, and we
> welcome
> constructive criticism throughout the process.
>

I guess the one thing I would challenge you on here is on the idea of
"unhappy" outcomes.  It is true only one project might be able to get the
option of getting code contributions.  It is also true that whatever you
build within a year of developer time will only meet the needs of some
subset of the NPO community.  It's tempting to think of those who lose out
on phase 1 as having an unhappy outcome, but I don't think that's the case.
 To the extent that there can be hands-on evaluation with the participation
of NPO's in phase 0, with an effort to match need for need, then I think
that everyone will come away with a better understanding of what is needed.
 To my mind that provides seed communities to help reach markets you might
not be able to.

I guess what I am advocating here is looking at how to treat phase 0 as
being useful in cultivating competing solutions outside of whatever the SF
Conservancy funds in stage 1.  The transparency is important, but to
whatever extent there can be active participation in evaluation and
feedback by NPO's (to the extent they are willing to donate time), that
would be helpful too.

Would it be appropriate here to make a more material offer for help with
evaluation (both to the SF Conservancy and to any more applicable NPO's
interested in providing feedback)?

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
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