[Discuss] Finance software for Linux

[Derek Martin]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 08:26:36AM -0500, Matthew Gillen wrote:
> On 1/14/2015 8:05 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> > Unfortunately there are only a few companies in the industry who
> > produce tax software, and they only Windows and Mac compatible, or
> > you can use the web interfaces. This type of software does not really
> > lend itself to to Open Source.
> 
> Why do you say that?  Because it requires a lot of specialized knowledge
> that typical CS majors don't have?  

That, AND that it requires being current with the entire country's tax
codes on an annual basis.  Most OSS software projects can't update
that much that quickly, particularly when the domain knowledge
required is completely orthogonal from the domain knowledge required
to do the coding work.  On top of that, it needs to reliably produce
correct results, or its users would be in a world of hurt.  So, the
standard OSS liability disclaimers don't really work well here--the
users really NEED to be able to have someone to blame.  Paying pros
may not afford you a lot of protection, but it does afford you more
than none.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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