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[Gnue-dev] New Guy


From: Dave Fancella
Subject: [Gnue-dev] New Guy
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 16:39:46 -0800
User-agent: KMail/1.4.3

Hello all,

Some of you have already met me in the irc channel going by the nickname 
frayed.  And as you know, I've been evaluating GNUe for my business.  :)  The 
result of which is the purpose of this post.  Sorry it's long....

First, some words about the business.  We're a startup, and we've been running 
for about 6-7 months now.  After my partner and I became mutually unemployed 
we "took advantage of this golden opportunity to go into business for 
ourselves."  :)  We do web marketing, but that's irrelevant.  :)  Part of our 
strategy is to develop a free software application that'll clean the floor 
with the likes of Dreamweaver and FrontPage (I know, I know, if you want to 
get famous in the free software world, don't build a killer app).  (if you 
guys are actually interested in the business, you can read more about it at 
http://www.belredweb.com/ )  We're based in the Seattle area, and the name of 
the company is a merge of the two towns in which we lived at the time of 
conception, which were Bellevue and Redmond (so we live in the belly of the 
beast, so to speak).

Anyway, what this means to GNUe is this:

We've decided to go with GNUe for our CRM/Accounting and so forth.  But we're 
the kind of guys who say "why should I build a rowboat to cross the river 
when I can build a yacht and do it with some style".  There are other 
considerations, also.  Here they are:

1.  Code maintenance.  One of the reasons we love free software is because the 
open-source development model makes for better code maintenance, but only if 
you have other people working on the code too.  We need to shorten 
development time, as well as lessen our longterm commitment to our own 
homegrown solution.

2.  Portability and pluggability.  Not only does it need to be cross-platform, 
but it also has to be easily extensible.  This includes the database schema 
as well.  We don't want to be in the trap of needing something from the 
software and not being able to add it for any reason, or being tied to a 
specific database server when we discover we need a different one.

There were some minor considerations also, but irrelevant for this post.  :)

GNUe is obviously strong in both of those major ones, and the way for us to be 
able to exploit those benefits is to contribute our code to the GNUe project 
specifically.  According to the GNUe website, it appears that you guys want a 
series of applications built with the framework to install with the 
out-of-the-box polish that makes executives want to open up their 
pocketbooks, but without requiring them to do so.

So, what this all comes down to is this:  we want to build those applications.  
Or rather, we want to work on them.  In order for the GNUe project to accept 
them into the project (without which we'll still use it, we just agree it's 
better this way for all of us), then they have to be built to GNUe's 
standards as well as our own.  You guys have proven throughout the project to 
us that you develop with similarly high standards as we do, so we just have 
to prove it to you.  :)

The question, then:  Is anybody working on them already?  If so, where would 
we get the information we need to coordinate our own work with it?  Ideally, 
if nothing has been started, then we would just work on the database schema, 
work with the project on it, and then when we all agree that the database is 
perfect,then we start working on the modules that we need for our business 
and send them back to GNUe, working more or less independently at that point.

I don't have a full list of my partner's credentials for this sort of project, 
I only know that he's been working with databases for a number of years and 
has developed a few applications.  They've all been proprietary, though, and 
used internally where he's worked.  (I've known him for years, and when we 
usually talk about programming we talk about games)

My credentials are short and unconvincing.  :)  Mostly, I've designed 
databases to deliver web content and built the server-side apps to do the 
delivering.  I've built a few home financial databases, but nothing that's 
been used and matured and so forth.  (Built it and said "This database is 
broke", so built another one and said "This database is broke".  I'm going at 
it again soon, though, for personal reasons :) )  And I've worked on the 
support end of sales calls trying to get NT administrators to install SQL 
Server and buy the product I was selling at the time, but at that time I was 
just showing them how to use our product with their database.  I have done 
some fairly extensive report development, though, and that's definitely my 
strongest area right now outside of delivering web content.

Neither of us knows python, but we've both learned a number of programming 
languages over the years and forgotten a few that we've learned (can you say 
"pascal"?), so picking it up shouldn't be that hard.  Especially since 
python's another c++-look-alike (and java, for that matter.  Ever play 
RoboCode?).  We both have some pretty extensive experience with html, but not 
much with xml.  NOt that xml is rocket science or anything...

Bottom line: we want to join the project and work on the applications, and not 
the framework.  :)  The framework already suits our needs, mostly.

Dave

-- 
"I slipped inside the oval office,
I slipped in oh so fast,
Grabbed the president by the necktie
And wiped my funky ass, hey"
                -Soulhat, "Bonecrusher"




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