[Malvern] LUG Up Front

[Barbie]

On Wed, May 02, 2007 at 09:51:58PM +0100, Geoff Bagley wrote:
> 
> One question which crops up in some circles concerns those applications 
> which are an industry
> standard, but for which there is no Linux equivalent. 
> Specifically "SAGE", widely used by most UK accountancy firms.

This is difficult. SAGE is a very established piece of software and the
accountancy rules can get very complex. John Pinner of Clockwork
Software and The Linux Emporium, wants to tackle this, and as first step
created PayThyme to handle payroll. It's all FLOSS and you can download
the code from their site. He employes a SAGE developer, who apparently
was one of the original coders on the application, way back when, so
understands the complexities. However, after about 3-4 years of knowing
John, he's still no nearer releasing an Open Source alternative.

It would take some major investment at the moment to try and do 
something to compete with SAGE, and I don't think anyone is willing to 
do that yet.

Barbie.
-- 
Birmingham Perl Mongers - http://birmingham.pm.org
Miss Barbell Productions - http://www.missbarbell.co.uk