Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...

Bill McGonigle bill at bfccomputing.com
Wed Nov 10 21:17:01 EST 2004


On Nov 10, 2004, at 19:26, Hewitt Tech wrote:

> Oddly QuickBooks will happily
> work with a Linux fileserver running Samba but Intuit won't support 
> users in
> that configuration. I can understand them not wanting to support Linux
> proper but it puzzles me why they don't add Linux fileservers as a 
> supported
> configuration.

Samba doesn't work out-of-the-box with Quickbooks when multiple users 
have the database open.  You have to do something like, IIRC,:

[share]
         oplocks = No
         level2 oplocks = No
         strict locking = Yes

and that means editing system files, and that means explaining vi or 
emacs keybindings to someone on the phone and, well, you can understand 
their position.  It's hard for them to say, "we support Linux servers 
but not if you're clueless," so they just say, "we only support Windows 
servers."  So, people with Linux servers lie and say they've got an NT4 
fileserver if it comes up.

This all implies nasty OS-dependent code in Quickbooks, and who really 
needs hackish open-source Windows code?

I'm using SQL-Ledger myself, but I understand GNUCash is making moves 
in the QuickBooks direction with recent releases.  I'm not particularly 
impressed with SQL-Ledger's ease-of-use.  Anybody here using GNUCash 
for their SMB accounting?

-Bill
----
Bill McGonigle, Owner           Work: 603.448.4440
BFC Computing, LLC              Home: 603.448.1668
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