Quasar Accounting finds move to open source adds up
Tuesday, March 01 2005 @ 09:01 PM EST Contributed by: glosser
The NewsForge discusses Quasar's decision to open source their accounting software.
Last month Linux Canada released Quasar Accounting 1.4 for Linux under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Phil Tonnellier, president of Linux Canada, says it's too early to tell if the move to open source is paying off, but response has been good so far, with more than 6,000 downloads since the January 13 release.
Linux Canada has been developing accounting software since 1994, and released Quasar 1.0 in May 2001. In 2002, Linux Canada began offering a "base package" of Quasar binaries free of charge to end users on a single computer in an attempt to create interest, with add-on modules available for a price. As awareness picked up, Tonnellier and Brad Pepers, Linux Canada's co-founder and lead developer of Quasar, decided that the best way to ensure widespread adoption of the accounting software was to go all out and release the source code as well. "We wanted to see Quasar used all over the world and have the pride of it being our product," Pepers says. "But we needed to figure out a way to do it and still make a living."
