Re: New project description on the SF project front page

[Chris Travers <..hidden..>]

On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 3:40 PM, Erik Huelsmann <..hidden..> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Our current project description isn't a very good one (my opinion).
> So, I'm sending a draft replacement:
>

Just a little history here:

The current description was put up for LedgerSMB 1.0, and was a decent
description marketing-wise of LedgerSMB through version 1.2.  There
was a plan to change it to move away from positioning LedgerSMB as an
SQL-Ledger fork with the release of 1.3, but we all got busy and that
hasn't happened.  So now is a great time to discuss this.

I also think that is an excellent start.

> """
> LedgerSMB aims to be an ERP, amongst others featuring accounting
> (including AR & AP), quotation and order management for businesses
> with small to medium transaction volumes. [The system has shown to be
> able to easily handle thousands of AR/AP transactions per week!]

Recommend changing the above slightly:
"""
LedgerSMB is an ERP, featuring accounting (including AR, AP, and GL),
quotation and order management, and more, for businesses with small to
medium transaction volumes.  The system has been shown to easily
handle thousands of AR/AP transactions per week.
"""
I think that's a little easier to read.  Also mentioning GL because I
have occasionally run into customers who had vertically tailored small
business ERP's which didn't include GL if you can believe that.

> The LedgerSMB development team aims for LedgerSMB to be a platform to
> integrate with other business applications.
> The development team highly values community contributions and aims to
> stimulate growth of a broad community by actively providing support
> and open documentation.
> Data integrity, security, quality and responsiveness are key values
> for both the LedgerSMB developers and (we hope) its users.
> LedgerSMB is a fork of SQL-Ledger. We're working hard to replace the
> code we inherited with code we think you deserve.
> """

I am wondering if we can consolidate the above in some way into make
it flow better.

How about:
"""
Data integrity, security, quality, and responsiveness are key values
for our community, both among the developers and, we hope, the users.
Additionally we aim to make LedgerSMB into a platform to integrate
with (and even serve as a framework for) other applications.  We
highly value community contributions and aim to stimulate growth
through a broad community by actively providing support and
documentation.

LedgerSMB began as a fork of SQL-Ledger, but we are working hard to
replace the code we have inherited with code we think you deserve.
"""

Putting that all together we have:

"""
LedgerSMB is an ERP, featuring accounting (including AR, AP, and GL),
quotation and order management, and more, for businesses with small to
medium transaction volumes.  The system has been shown to easily
handle thousands of AR/AP transactions per week.

Data integrity, security, quality, and responsiveness are key values
for our community, both among the developers and, we hope, the users.
Additionally we aim to make LedgerSMB into a platform to integrate
with, or even serve as a framework for building, other applications.
We highly value community contributions and aim to stimulate growth
through a broad community by actively providing support and
documentation.

LedgerSMB began as a fork of SQL-Ledger, but we are working hard to
replace the code we have inherited with code we think you deserve.
"""