The Copyright of TurboCASH Accounting

Philip Copeman Project Leader

TurboCASH Accounting

Trademarks

The trademarks TurboCASH Accounting are fully reserved,  Philip Copeman. Reistribution of modified code under the TurboCASH Accounting Trademark is not permitted.

Early Systems

TurboCASH has a 30 year history having come through a number of evolutions as a proprietary system.

TurboCASH 3

In 2003 Philip Copeman, as the sole owner of the TurboCASH Code released TurboCASH under the GPL open source licence. The code was written in Delphi 6 and required numerous proprietary libraries, including:

Windows 95

Delphi 6

Infopower

Quick Reports

The Borland Database Engine

The use of proprietary libraries does cause clashes with the GPL, because these libraries are not provided in source. The code had been developed by a number of people in my employ including, Pieter Templin, Antonio Strydom, Sylvian Mbumba. We were aided by the Accountants Faizal Razak and Sylvain Mbumba. Philip Copeman wrote The Database design, User Interface, Open Item Accounting and Data conversions and the Inno Script Installation program.

TurboCASH 3 is available for download in Source Code and EXE at www.sourceforge.net/projects/turbocash Users and developers are welcome to participate in its development under the GPL licence. Philip Copeman retains all rights to the TurboCASH Trademarks.

TurboCASH 4

In 2005 Pieter Valentijn joined the Project and made substantial additions to the code, most particularly converting the Database from Borland Database Engine to Firebird SQL and replacing Quick Reports with Reportman.

Danie van Zyl enhanced the installation program, created and expanded numerous charts of accounts for many countries and developed documentation for English and Afrikaans. Danie worked with a number of translators to incorporate hundreds of accounts schemas language files.

We were helped by accountants Selwyn Wacks and Dome Guilermo. Contributions of charts of accounts and translations were managed and integrated by Dan van Zyl

Over the next 7 years, many releases of TurboCASH 4 were made. These were tested, installed and debugged by a number of contributors. This was however not an even workload. Pieter Valentijn worked exclusively on developing the core code of the program and Danie Van Zyl worked exclusively on the installation script. Philip Copeman worked exclusively on the User interface.

The problem of the dependencies remained. TurboCASH 4 is available for download in Source Code and EXE at www.sourceforge.net/projects/turbocash

TurboCASH 5

In 2012 PieterValentijn began to replace Infopower with Quantum Grid and Indac with Unidac. We were faced with a dilemma. Over the ensuing 10 years of the project, in the Delphi environment, proprietary components developed faster than open source components. We were faced with sticking to open source components or using proprietary components for better results.

In 2015 this came to a head. We needed to fork the project. Philip decided to use the Axialis Icon Library for UI and the Quatum and Unidac licences were distinctly non open source.

Dan van Zyl ceeded his copyright in the project to Philip Copeman. In agreement with Pieter Valentijn, we forked TurboCASH 4 and TurboCASH 5. We retained TurboCASH 4 as an open source project and released TurboCASH 5 under a commercial licence.

Dutch Accounts and translations were removed from the program to allow Pieter Valentijn to focus on the Dutch market under the brand OS Financials.

TurboCASH 5 is a joint venture between Pieter Valentijn and Philip Copeman and is supported by the users that pay the annual subscription (Currently $60 for single users and $200 for multi user). Danie van Zyl is still a valued contributor.

The Open Source Roadmap

The “mixed” open source nature of TurboCASH has restricted developer input. What is needed for open source is a development environment that completely opens the software. The licences required to compile as well as hefty upfront investment to master the code makes getting involved with TurboCASH daunting to the new coming developer.

We are currently investigating alternatives to build an open sources framework from the ground up. Clearly we now find our selves in a world dominated by Mobile, Cloud and micro services. This means great changes will be required to move TurboCASH forward.

The Delphi Roadmap

The Delphi ecosystem continues to evolve we are looking at how to extend TurboCASH 5 forward. The immediate future looks to be dominated with integration between TurboCASH and other systems. The Business Roadmap The full facilities of TurboCASH 4 open source are still open and this wishing to distribute free software of bundle solution without cost should use this option. Those wishing to use TurboCASH 5 should purchase a subscription and get the benefit of the proprietary integrations that we are developing.