[Fsf-friends] Fwd: [nagarjun@gnowledge.org: [ILUG-BOM] Tally and GNU/Linux]

[Sandip Bhattacharya]

On Tue, 2005-04-12 at 16:59 +0530, Nagarjuna G. wrote:
> > agencies.  This clearly shows that these distribution
> > companies do not have any interest other than being in
> > business. 
> > 
> > BTW, those of you who have some knowledge of this
> > application, can you do some research about how the
> > data is stored in Tally?  Is this encoding a standard?
> > Does this application support Export of data to any
> > other standards?   What freedom users have?  Are
> > the users locked in?  etc.
> > 


Lets be clear on one thing - is being in business/being a
businessman/running a for-profit setup a "wrong thing"?

Let businesses do whatever they want to do - take out their own
distributions, packaging proprietary packages etc. What we need to
always watch out is that their commercial interest do not at any time
trample public interest. Yes, this happens from time to time but that
doesnt mean that we need to have a confrontationist attitude towards
*all* businesses.

Tally, on the other hand, is an example of a software which, because of
its reach has become an item we people should start worrying about.
Lakhs of offices around the country have a wealth of critical data in
Tally's data format(a larger part of this audience is using illegally
copied software .. nevertheless). If Tally goes belly-up one day, all
these people will be saddled with obsolete software. Obsolence matters
in the fast changing tax landscape in India. It is time someone
developed a free utility to import tally data into a standardized format
like SQL. After which a horde of software can be built around it.

- Sandip
--
Sandip Bhattacharya    *    Puroga Technologies   *     sandip@puroga.com
Work: http://www.puroga.com   *    Home/Blog: http://www.sandipb.net/blog

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