The forwarded mail may be of interest to all.
----- Forwarded message from "Nagarjuna G." nagarjun@gnowledge.org -----
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 14:45:14 +0530 From: "Nagarjuna G." nagarjun@gnowledge.org Subject: [ILUG-BOM] Tally and GNU/Linux To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Reply-To: nagarjun@gnowledge.org, "GNU/Linux Users Group, Mumbai, India" linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Organization: gnowledge.org User-Agent: KMail/1.7.2
I have been seeing that off and on this list keeps talking about Tally and how to run this on GNU/Linux? Tally is not a free software, and I dont see why users should discuss this on this list.
On the other hand availability of accounting packages is a big problem and several hackers are addressing this issue, including some of our own list members. We should discuss those issues.
This list is not for discussing propreitary software, but free software. In fact we should be discussing the issue of how to boycott the distributions that ship propreitary software and have explicit tieups with such 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.
Nagarjuna
----- End forwarded message -----
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
PGP/GPG Signature: 51A4 6C57 4BC6 8C82 6A65 AE78 B1A1 2280 A129 0FF3
On Tuesday 12 Apr 2005 5:33 pm, Sandip Bhattacharya wrote:
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"?
No. doing a business for earning only without looking into the social consequences is, I think, wrong. earning profit is not wrong, but we do need to have a check on the means of earning profit.
You reply suggests, that it is possible to take the data out of Tally, can you inform how?
Nagarjuna
On Tue, 2005-04-12 at 17:53 +0530, Nagarjuna G. wrote:
You reply suggests, that it is possible to take the data out of Tally, can you inform how?
Well, it is possible to take data out of any application. :) We need to reverse engineer this data. In Tally's case, Tally stores all data for every client in a separate directory. I am sure that earlier versions of Tally(like the very popular DOS version) didnt implement embedded databases on their own. So their data files would be some easily breakable format. Newer versions do claim some kind of encryption I think. But in these cases the formats are likely just extended versions of the earlier file formats with additionals encryption added ( I can be very wrong here)!
In any case, I dont think we should discuss finer details on this matter on this list :)
- Sandip
-- Sandip Bhattacharya * Puroga Technologies * sandip@puroga.com Work: http://www.puroga.com * Home/Blog: http://www.sandipb.net/blog
PGP/GPG Signature: 51A4 6C57 4BC6 8C82 6A65 AE78 B1A1 2280 A129 0FF3
Nagarjuna G. wrote:
On the other hand availability of accounting packages is a big problem and several hackers are addressing this issue, including some of our own list members. We should discuss those issues.
If there is any auditor here who would like to help with accounting concepts, please get in touch with me.
Thanks.
-
Nagarjuna G. -
Ramanraj K -
Sandip Bhattacharya