[PLUG] A challenge...

[Jason Dagit]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 6:57 PM, Michael Robinson
<plug_1 at robinson-west.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2009-04-16 at 12:07 -0700, Joe Shisei Niski wrote:
>> Rogan Creswick wrote:
>> > On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Michael <michael at jamhome.us> wrote:
>> >
>> >> So what does that long history do for you in TY N+1 ?
>> >>
>> > I like not needing to remember when I changed from TaxSlayer to pen &
>> > paper, to Fiducial, to TurboTax to ....
>> >
>> > The fewer places I might have to go to get previous year data (when I
>> > loose track of my personal copies), the better -- all other things
>> > being equal.
>> >
>> > --Rogan
>> Our consulting accountant (who we pay for 1 hour to review our
>> self-prepared return, and who usually saves us 2x his fee + the annual
>> cost of TT, which is Schedule C and E deductible anyway) is a better
>> TurboTax support tech than anyone employed by Intuit - he's helped me
>> force TT to do my bidding in some relatively challenging scenarios (1031
>> exchanges, odd depreciation allocations, Shcedule E loss
>> carry-forwards,etc.).
>>
>> My biggest beef w/TT (the download & install versions) is how much the
>> ui/workflow changes from year to year - kind of gratuitous, and adds
>> unnecessary overhead to what should be a fairly repetitive process...
>> Yeah, running TT and Quicken on WinXP in VirtualBox is a bit
>> distasteful, but works just fine.
>>
>> Joe
>
> I think you guys are missing the whole point of the challenge.  The
> challenge is to replace TurboTax with a Linux based tax preparation
> program.  Talking about whether or not TurboTax online works and
> how to do your taxes with a stone chisel or chickens misses the
> point.  I would like to see some discussion on how to get a project
> going to write a tax preparation program for Linux.  Yeah there should
> be a Windows version too, so maybe Java and/or LISP should be used.
> I'm curious why people talk about whether or not TurboTax online works
> and not about what it would take to replace it with a Linux compatible
> program?
>
> How do you get a project started on sourceforge?

It's easy.  You just sign up at the sf.net website.

> Who wants to join me?

People who think you have a good start on it and also believe you're
serious about getting results.  If you want to find others to help
you, you'll have to take the initiative to get it rolling.  Perhaps
you should read "Producing Open Source Software" by Karl Fogel:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007591/

> What will a sourceforge project cost?

Open source is at least as expensive as non-Open source software.
Costwise you just have the advantage that people donate their time and
some companies donate more than just time.  Hosting at sf.net is
"free" in the sense that they don't put any charges on your credit
card.  Github is also quite popular these days.

Jason