I’ve been using Moneydance for some time now, for both my personal and business financial needs, and I wanted to go ahead and post this short endorsement of the product.

First of all, I switched to Moneydance from Quicken for Mac partly because Quicken has always been rather buggy on the Mac, but most of all, I was very disappointed with Quicken’s reporting features. Now, to be fair, Moneydance doesn’t do exactly what I want in terms of reporting, but it’s a fair bit better than Quicken, to be sure.

Secondly, Moneydance is far more cross-platform, being Java-based. It allows me to work with the same data in the same program across Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Thirdly, Moneydance is less expensive than Quicken. It has all the online banking capabilities I was using in Quicken, but nearly half the price.

Lastly, Moneydance has a developer API for custom extensions. I love customizable software. I have just begun writing a Moneydance extension that should resolve my remaining issues with reporting.

BMT Micro provides a generous demo of Moneydance which I recommend checking out. If you like the software and would like to purchase it, do me a favor and use the following link to let them know that you heard about it here.

Purchase Moneydance.

I ran across DocuWiki when viewing the documentation for Quicksilver. The output is very attractive and well organized. This looks like a great option for software project documentation. It appears as though it could handle most all documentation needs for small development shops. From the website:

DokuWiki is a simple to use Wiki aimed at a small companies documentation needs. It works on plain texts files and thus needs no database. It has a simple but powerful Syntax which makes sure the datafiles remain readable outside the Wiki.

I just ran across the Butterfly XML editor. It is a simplistic XML IDE that doesn’t seem to yet match the functionality of the more powerful commercial XML IDEs available, but it is open source, and for simple XML editing, it seems like it would do the trick. It is cross-platform, as it is written in Java. If nothing else, it’s certainly one to keep your eyes on.

I now have my own Bacula backup setup running entirely over IPv6. It didn’t take too long to figure out, but I thought I’d share this here. The trick is defining the addresses for your storage daemon, file daemon, and director. The entry looks something like this:

DIRAddresses = {
   ipv6 = {
     addr = servername;
     port = 9101;
   }
 }

In my case, I have AAAA records set up for my servers, so I’m not using the colon notation, but the documentation seems to indicate that either is acceptable. This above example is for my director, found in the bacula-dir.conf file. Similar entries for the FD and SD are found in their respective files.

I was disappointed to receive an email yesterday from Rob Braun, announcing the soon termination of the OpenDarwin project. As Mr. Braun writes:

OpenDarwin has failed to achieve its goals in 4 years of operation, and
moves further from achieving these goals as time goes on. For this
reason, OpenDarwin will be shutting down.

First of all, I want to thank the OpenDarwin project and those who have contributed their efforts over the lifetime of the project. I have had an opportunity to explore aspects of Darwin / Mac OS X that I would otherwise not have had. I realize that these efforts have largely gone unnoticed and unappreciated. I want them to know that the project will most certainly be missed.

Now, for those that may not know much about OpenDarwin, I’ll try to explain its purpose to the best of my understanding. Apple has been releasing its Darwin source code since Mac OS X 10.0. But this source has not necessarily been very useful. Throughout the development of Darwin / Mac OS X, there have been those that wanted to interact and work with the Darwin source code as they were accustomed to doing with Linux or one of the BSDs. The OpenDarwin project existed primarily to facilitate this effort, to make the Apple-released Darwin code more useful.

So what led the project leadership to the decision to shut down the project? Well, as I’ve written about here before, Apple has recently changed their release schedule regarding the Darwin source. In fact, the x86 sources appear to have dried up entirely. While some have pointed out that Apple hasn’t made any official explanation as to the “delay,” and that we might yet expect the x86 source to materialize, this latest development in the OpenDarwin project casts sharp doubts as to the eventual release of the x86 source, at least in my opinion. Certainly this wasn’t the only issue that was a sore spot between Apple and the OpenDarwin project. Developers have referred to a long-standing distrust between the two parties that stem from various issues. Perhaps this x86 source issue was just the last straw. Indeed the announcement from Mr. Braun indicates a sense of frustration and resignation.

What does it all mean? Well, for many, of course, it won’t mean anything. The OpenDarwin project has lived in relative obscurity for these past years. Certain OD projects, of course, have had great popularity, most notably, the excellent DarwinPorts project. But the core effort to bring order and meaning to the Darwin sources has arguably made little impact in the Mac OS X community. So, while some may not think the demise of the OpenDarwin project significant, I think this may just be another sign that something is going terribly awry at Cupertino.

After all, Apple has benefited measurably from the impression that they are a good citizen in the open source community. I, for one, know a number of colleagues that have “switched” in part because they had gotten that impression themselves, or because I had given it to them. I don’t wish to Apple-bash here, however. Apple is, in fact, an open source citizen. And they have made some important contributions. The newly reorganized WebKit (link will be invalid soon) project shows particular promise. But despite their contributions, I wonder if they can be considered a good open source citizen. And, if they are found undeserving of the credit they’ve received, what then? This post from Mr. Braun describes, in his words, why Darwin failed and serves to shed some light on these questions.

One of the OD project goals, I believe, was to keep Apple honest. If the project leadership feel that they have failed in that goal, what can we now expect from Apple? Is there an opportunity to fill the void left by the OpenDarwin project? Can anyone who enjoys Darwin / Mac OS X hope to participate in or contribute to its development like those who enjoy Linux? Maybe we need a ReOpenedDarwin project.