Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software

[Adrian Hoe <mailbox@adrianhoe.nospam.com.my>]

Christopher Browne wrote:

> 
> The confusion is understandable, as there was, at one point, a company
> building software to do POS and integrate that with GnuCash.  Two or
> three of the GnuCash "core developers" went into that project.  
> 
> Not too surprisingly, in retrospect, not much emerged, and the
> business enterprise was discontinued.


Business software is the most chanllenging software development if 
compare to system software. By the time you finish off your development, 
the business rules may have already evolved and you have to catch up 
with that. The life cycle goes on and on.

Believe me, your nightmare will not end. I come from business software 
domain.

Although providing a way to allow users to update the evolutionary 
changes (in Stephane's reply) provide a flexible functionality of the 
software, that renders the software to be complex and afterall, it is 
hard to predict what will come next.

Even the gigantic SAP application framework does not fit into all 
manufacturing environment. You will need alot of customization if you 
want it to work according to spec.

The world is full of chaos and no one can accurately predict the next 
happening. We can only design the software to handle evolutions that 
have already occured.

Understand the business software domain, you will no longer surprise 
that the enterprise has been discontinued.

Adrian Hoe