Reviewing the Statement of Direction

[Chris Travers <..hidden..>]

Those who have been in this project since the beginning no doubt
remember the original Statement of Direction, written in its earliest
form in the first few months of this project.  A copy with only minor
changes can be found currently at http://ledgersmb.org/node/92

This document describes the overall vision of the LedgerSMB project.
Now, more than three years into the project, it seems worth revisiting
this, discussing it, and determining where we should focus more time
and energy.  I am going to further provide my own sense as to these
questions here and request additional perspectives.

I:  LedgerSMB as Business Infrastructure

The current discussions regarding 2.0 development for the first time
are bringing LedgerSMB towards the fulfillment of this goal.  The
major goals initially set forth will be met in 2.0 in this area unless
we either fall short of our goals, make mistakes, etc.

I would like to add one point here, which is "many levels of
interoperability."  This is something we have started on in our
discoverable stored procedure interfaces and I would like to see it
continue with a (fairly) stable core table system, web services, and
the like.

II:  LedgerSMB as a web applicationi

Here I am less sure of the continuing relevance of our past goals.  I
have come to value transparency to experts more than abstraction to
novices.  However, the nice thing about having separable interfaces is
that those who want more abstracted interfaces could have them (and
there is no reason why a second template  set would be required in
many cases).  I would therefore suggest the following changes:

1)  Instead of "user-friendly naming of things" I would like to change
that to "A choice of user interfaces"
Change point 2 to:  When given a choice of two problematic ways of
doing things, warn the user and allow the user to resolve the problem.
Change point 3 to:  Beginner interfaces should be available for those
considering LedgerSMB as an alternative to Quickbooks and similar
products


III:  Universal applicability:

We have made a great deal of progress here.  I would like to add here:

1)  A strong development community supplying addons.

Otherwise, how does this all sound?

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers