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GNOME GUI

Gnucash 1.3.0 Beta Released 178

Posted by CmdrTaco from the allright dept.
Jeremy Collins wrote in to tell us that Gnucash 1.3.0 Beta is out. We keep the software release announcements to a minimum and let more appropriate sites handle them, but this is pretty significant. Gnucash is the best quickenesque program under Linux today, and as we all know: it's those pesky end user apps that we lag behind other OSs. We've already got several word processors, spreadheets and image manipulation coming along nicely, but seeing development happen in the financial package area (also games and video) is important. Anyway, I'd suggest checking this one out: I've been using it since xacc and it's good if you're anal. Check out the ftp.gnucash.org and report bugs if you see 'em.
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Gnucash 1.3.0 Beta Released More

Gnucash 1.3.0 Beta Released

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  • Re:OFFTOPIC: Language question (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ac wrote:

    > it's good if you're anal.

    > English isn't my native tongue. Could someone please elaborate the meaning of this metaphor?

    Not really a psychology whiz but here goes: being "anal" refers to Freud's stages of development, specifically the anal retentive stage. According to Freud it is the stage where infants focus in on control urges, specifically the control of the release of feces (which is why it is called the anal retentive stage). People are generally supposed to largely pass through this stage while infants but a fair number of adults retain certain aspects, some to extremes. Of course the object of control for anal retentive adults is no longer control of release of feces. Rather, anal retentive adults generally express their control urges in other ways, usually be a need for extreme organization. Thus being anal generally refers to a "control freak".
  • Stop trying to figure out how to adapt a ferrari for cheep economical everyday driving to the grocery store and back.
    Except that it is cheap and economical --and if there is a way to use it to get you to the grocery store and back, Linux has the added benefit of doing this reliably for you no matter what the weather is or the roads. And you don't need two: one to drive while the mechanic fixes the other one. It's a lot more like a medium duty diesel truck or a Humvee than a Ferrari in those respects.

    Linux doesn't need to become a replacement for Windows to be successful...well, I might agree; but I'd caution you that MS strategy for Windows does not stand still. We know from the Halloween studies that MS tying client and server much more closely together is a highly likely response to defending/extending NT from Linux. W2K ADD and MS-kerberos show signs of his sort of unfolding strategy. If Linux becomes a more credible desktop system, though, that MS strategy will appear more obviously as the onerous extortion threat against the world's corporations that it is, and it may backfire.

    I guess it could all depend on your definition of success. But i'd include in that, at a minimum, not getting screwed by people who mean you harm. And since I like to use Linux as my desktop system I really welcome any and all real advancements in desktop type applications and guis--even if there are some I don't want. It's expanded choice for everyone and I just don't see how you can be against that.

  • Re:Too bad it doesn't... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anyone else think allowing proprietary software from a notably unscrupulous vendor add arbitrary transactions to your checkbook is a really bad idea?
  • With Quicken2000 at least, they don't like QIF files with "00" for the year, as my bank does. I just had to filter it through sed to turn that into 2000 to get it to import it. And yes, I've got all the updates.
  • MoneyDance [seanreilly.com] is a java based financial application. While it is shareware ($25), and it isn't free as in free speech or free beer, it is a very good financial application with active development.

    That said, I think I'll check out what GnuCash is doing. :)

    Yes, Virginia, you can get Quicken-alikes in Linux. :)

  • perl -MCPAN -e shell
    lets you download and install whatever perl modules you want. (It only works on Unix, for windows, try Activestate's PPM). It does dependency checking etc. So you could say
    install HTML::Mason
    and it would download that package and all that it depends on, compile the C bits, and install them.

    Going further OT: does python have anything comparable?
    --
    Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.

  • I keep my checking in a credit union, my ATM account in a local bank with convenient locations, my credit cards with folks with good rates, etc., etc.

    I have no interest in having the credit-card bank decide I'm overlimit, say, and take the cash to make it up from my co-located savings account. Nor do I want some (admittedly secure [probably]) institution to have all that info in one place so it can decide to sell that accurate info to some spamming entity. I don't even want to have the remote possibility of the bank going under and all my funds awaiting the pleasure of the FDIC.

    Diversification is good---why do you think networks try to have multiple independent routes to other nodes?

  • I think I briefly played with Gnucash once before, but I can't get myself to use these money management programs. I think the only reason why I would bother using Quicken or something like that is because they do a lot of work for preparing your US tax returns when it comes time. I'm sure it does numbers nicely for you, but it is a feature in the commercial products which is enticing...

    --
  • "We keep the software release announcements to a minimum and let more appropriate sites handle them, but this is pretty significant."

    The top five reasons Rob thinks accounting software is "signifigant"
    #1 - Hard to keep track of beer bought in geek compound
    #2 - Tracking travel time to important nude bars^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H linux confrences
    #3 - Replacing things lost in fire
    #4 - price of Red Hat Linux raised to $49.99
    #5 - losing track of all the payoffs from Andover.net.
    ------------
    a funny comment: 1 karma
    an insightful comment: 1 karma
    a good old-fashioned flame: priceless

  • If junkbuster can get between your browser and
    your bank on an SSL connection then I think there
    you've got some pretty big security problems. If
    junkbuster can change your user-agent then it can
    also sniff your password/pin for the online banking site.

  • but they changed the name from GnoMoney (which I thought was a very cool name) to GNUCash, which is stupid. I won't use it anymore!!
  • If you use double entry to categorize your transactions, then beware! With the binary RPM, if you select the "Transfer From" field, then it goes into an infinite loop and must be killed.

    The eye candy is much nicer than the Motif version.
  • Now all we need is for someone to write an open source checkbook register for Palm Pilots that can sync with GnuCash, and all the paper records can go away. :)

    John
  • Chill out man!

    My impression is that this isn't the guy bitching about the posts, but rather suggesting a way to satisfy the people who are bitching and moaning...

    It didn't seem like that bad a suggestion to me.

  • Some versions of Quicken 98 had a y2k bug in that feature. I didn't bother to upgrade since I don't use that feature.

    Chris

    Surfing the net and other cliches...
  • Banks *CAN* make mistakes. Just last year my bank paid out too much on a check I wrote. I wouldn't have caught it if I just downloaded their info. Since I kept my own records, I just went in and told them, and got my $3 back.

    Chris

    Surfing the net and other cliches...
  • I do a lot of financial work, so I've really felt the incompleteness of spreadsheets like Gnumeric (which I do like -- but it doesn't do enough).

    So far, my favorite of the commercial (proprietary) spreadsheets is xess. My second favorite is StarOffice.

    Neither of them has really good UI. For example, (in xess) if I copy four cols by one row and paste it into something eight rows by four cols, I get one row copied. That's a real pain.

    That said, it has what I really need, so it's less painful -- for now -- than the others.

    _Deirdre
  • A lot of people who have seven figures can't possibly afford having an accountant or minions. Besides, you missed the point:

    1) Accounting is about the PAST.

    2) Finance is about the FUTURE.

    Personal finance software isn't just a checkbook record. It's about planning for the FUTURE. This is something an accountant is NOT trained for.

    This is the difference between a CFP (Certified Financial Planner) and an accountant; a financial manager and an accounting manager.

    _Deirdre
  • I don't think Certain Large Software Companies would be able to get away with adding "arbitrary transactions" to bank accounts... after all, you still have other ways to determine what's going on in your account. Assuming you mean that a penny or two of each transaction might be siphoned off to, say, a certain Very Wealthy Man's bank account (or, more likely, the bank account of some underling who just happened to write the code that carries out the transactions), I doubt that it would escape the notice of everyone using the software. Pennies do eventually add up to a small discrepancy, and that would be hard to hide in a home user's checking account. (I've heard f such scemes working in multi-billion dollar companies, but that's another kettle of fish.)

    Now, if you want to be paranoid, think about the possibility of some Large Software Company's product maybe, say, leaking details of your bank transactions to their own server. Detailed banking histories of millions of people would probably be more lucrative for some company than penny-ante larceny.
  • And if you don't understand automake/autoconfig that well, then ask for help from someone who DOES understand it.

    Here's my benchmark of config file quality: If there is ANYTHING in my machine's configuration (that includes libraries, header files, etc) that you think may break the build, then TEST for it and make SURE that ALL of these issues are resolved by the time that the config file is finished running. If there is going to be a problem building the software, I want to know about it from the CONFIGURE SCRIPT, *NOT* three hours later when make suddenly throws out hundreds of errors about missing include files, or worse yet, during link time when suddenly hundreds of unresolved symbols are spewed at me. If the configure script finishes cleanly, I expect to be able to type make, go to class, and come back 4 hours later and see that it built correctly, instead of coming back and finding that it aborted 2 hours into the build over a STUPID path error that I could have EASILY corrected had I known about it in the first place (By the configure script TELLING me that)! Other then situations where you create pathological include files and libraries to specifically fool the configure script, I don't see this as an unreasonable request/demand.

    Another good thing to add to configure scripts are NOTES to the users/people compiling about options that don't currently WORK. Gnucash fails this test badly..it would have been nice to know that the "make qt" option REALLY doesn't WORK before trying it.

    Finally, if there is anything that is BLINDLY important for us to know/do or otherwise the program won't work correctly, put THAT at the end of the configure script as well.

  • Maybe you should get a new bank - the credit union ATM I use has no such charge.

  • Because I don't trust my bank to tell me how much money I have there. I balance my statement monthly versus my records in case they make an error. Not that this has ever occurred, but you never know. I wouldn't mind checking my statement online, and having the reconciliation between the bank's version of events and mine done automatically. But I insist on keeping separate records of income and expense rather than trusting a bank to keep the only copy of that information.

    [OnTopic]I've tried to updgrade to GnuCash, but the last time I did so, it couldn't import any of my current accounts. I had exported them from MSMoney 2.0a (really old version) with "strict QIF compatibility" (at least, according to Microsoft) but GnuCash couldn't read them. Maybe I'll try it again with this new release, but I really won't be able to upgrade until I can convert my old records. Too bad, because MSMoney is the only reason that I ever boot into Windows anymore. As I get new accounts I'm probably going to create them in GnuCash, but since I don't switch banks and credit cards too often, this migration may take a while.

  • Given that it happened on January 1, it sounds like it might be one of two things:

    • A Y2K problem with Quicken. Check Quicken's web site for Quicken 98 patches.
    • Your encryption certificate was set to expire on Jan 1, 2000. Ask your bank about it -- you're probably not the first to have this problem -- you might have to get an update from Quicken or update your web browser to get a new working certificate.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Eh? (Score:1)

    by Zico ( 14255 )

    Mine always has the exact amount that I planned to take out of it. Why are you paying more?

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • A few? (Score:1)

    by Zico ( 14255 )

    I'm honestly not aware of any banks that charge their own customers ATM fees (except the ones that have limits on the number of transactions -- ATM or teller -- you can utilize each month). If you decide to use an ATM at a bank other than your own, why should their customers subsidize your use of their ATMs? Seems like you should pay a surcharge for that, despite what the idiotic, socialist voters of San Francisco think, seeing as they're just looking for a handout.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • The Server should never trust the client

    denying this is how microsoft got in trouble

  • CBB now lives at http://cbb.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]

    I have also been using cbb for a couple years now. The functionality is quite sufficient to keep track of my accounts and credit cards.

    However, I would very much like to convert to gnucash, which looks like a much more full-featured, easier-to-use product, and seems (for the last few months) stable enough to be useful.

    Of course, the first thing I tried in pursuit of conversion to gnucash is the export and import QIF functions of cbb and gnucash respectively. However, this is a huge disaster because the nature of a "category" is substatially different in gnucash than in CBB. Specifically, in CBB a "category" is a description of a transaction within an account, whereas in gnucash (and in Quicken?) a "category" is associated with an account.

    Thus, when one attempts to export the QIF for an account from CBB and import QIF to gnucash, the result tends to be a large number of accounts in gnucash, one account for each transaction category from CBB.

    At least, this was my experience last time I attempted the conversion. Anyway, the idea of manually re-entering all those old transactions is particularly unappealing.

    Thus, my question:
    Does anyone know of a conversion utility that will convert from CBB to gnucash which results in 1 CBB account yielding 1 gnucash account?

  • I received a free upgrade from Q98 to Q2K. They sent me the CD and told me to install it and I did. So far everything's cool. Since they're giving it away (and it's only an upgrade, not a full install) they should have no problem with someone making you a copy of it. If you'll e-mail me and let me know, I'll burn one for you provided it doesn't violate the license.
  • I couldn't help but notice the error in the register screenshot. When was the last time you got $40 out of the ATM and your receipt didn't say $41.50?
  • Some tax programs let you import data in several formats. Last time I looked, some of the open tools export in several of the formats which tax programs accept. You'll have to check if the two tools you prefer have a format in common.

    I do wonder which tax company (not necessarily one which is presently in the tax software business) will be first in the Linux tax market. The program can be fully open, as what they'd really be selling is a new copy every year with the current forms and tax rules. We can already see that many people are paying for the expertise in such programs rather than making a spreadsheet themselves every year.

  • ahh, but it is better if you KnewCash or if you KnowCash?

    --
  • First of all, neither .rpm nor .deb is comparable to a .tgz. A tgz can't be made to do what either of those can, period.
    Second, neither of those formats are proprietary in any way whatsoever.
    Third, rpm2cpio (included with the rpm distribution) will convert any rpm into a standard cpio archive, which can then be extracted with GNU cpio. I don't know much about .deb but I believe it can be easily extracted with tar.
    When administering a real system (meaning, one which may potentially at some present or future date be administered by someone, even yourself, who doesn't remember every single command that's been typed on the system so far) package management is essential, and it's fortunate that we've been given two useful, open formats to do it with.
    Build an RPM sometime and you'll understand.
  • No matter what features may be included in GNUCash there is still one missing : Importing M$ Money 99 files. This would be the only way for me to get rid of this M$ software and replace it by a Linux compliant one. My Money 99 database is filled with two years of deb/creds the I wouldn't like to loose it by migrating from a software to an other.
    Until there I still need a computer able to boot under Windows. What a pitty !!

  • I can't believe that with all the companies out there producing enterprise quality accounting software that not even one can see the benefit of going OpenSource.

    What we need is a good solid integrated software package. Here is one that I have been checking out. Its called Pacioli2000 [pacioli2000.com]. They have been around a long time yet I only stumbled across them while looking through the bargain rack at the local computer store. The version I saw was dated 1993 and had tons of kudos on the box from software reviewers. Maybe they failed to catch on big time but at any rate maybe we should pick a company like this and lobby them to go OpenSource.

    If you follow the trends in the accounting software industry you see some pretty scary stuff. Peachtree Accounting was bought out by Sage software [sage.com], the same company that produces MAS90 [mas90.com]. Already they are upscaling Peachtree to the Pay by install/ module/ user seat model. Last time I checked Peachtree was the only decently priced double-accounting software package (most of the cheapos like Quicken and Money are single accounting). That is sure to change. Pacioli, named after the inventor of accounting, may be another possibility. At least until some other big fish swallows them.

  • Junkbuster is not a service on an external website. It is a filtering proxy you install on your own machine. It may have security issues but they would be more of the possible buffer overrun remote exploit type of thing. I don't know if SSL will go through a Junkbuster proxy or not. I use ipchains to stop banner ads and the like.
  • You might be able to use Junkbuster to spoof your browser string. If it's just boneheaded web administration rather than something truly proprietary like an ActiveX control then spoofing may work. Basically you can make the bank server think you are using any combination of OS and browser you want them to think you are using.

  • 1. Because not everyone has access to a bank which provides this service.

    2. Some people don't want to have their bank account, credit card, brokerage, etc with the same company/group of companies.
  • I disagree. I have a accountants. I have money managers for my "7 figures". I still need to keep my checkbook balanced and I still need to reconcile my credit cards (I guess I could just let the managers pay it off monthly, but I prefer to keep my eye closely on those scummy carpet installer shops who don't deliver.)

    I use Quicken98 on a mac right now. Many bugs. Mostly it does what I want. It gives me all kinds of nifty reports. I would prefer no to have to boot the mac to do this. I would prefer to have a FreeBSD program.

  • Thanks for the info (I didn't see this the last time I looked at GnuCash - probably just missed it). I agree with the GnuCash people that supporting the entire OFX spec would be a large undertaking (the .pdf I downloaded was 659 pages).

    I am still considering writing a simple checkbook program to take the OFX file my bank generates and let me manipulate it. I don't use Quicken/MS Money/GnuCash because they seem to take too much time for the effort (I have friends that spend 1-2 hours per day in Quicken).

  • There is definitely no Active X going on as far as I can tell. My first instinct was to change my user-agent setting and for some reason I thought I could do this within my netscape prefs.js file. But, ok...Junkbuster it is :)

  • since these software releases keep getting posted anyway, why not post them from a new author, called "FreshMeat" or whatever, and allow people to block out all articles posted by that author?? This way, those of us who LIKE seeing this stuff on /. can, and those who don't, won't.
  • "Gnumeric. Maybe someday it will be finished. There's more there than there used to be. Want a graph? A border on a cell? Forget it; you can't have it yet.

    The current development version contains both.
    Borders, are almost feature complete.
    Graphs will be in the next release. Both have existing support for import from MS excel.

    Please try a newer version.
  • I agree that different ways to load things into a register (online, QIF, whatever) can certainly wait until after the register itself is stable. However, it's much harder to change the record structure after it's been initially developed, and for some odd reason the GnuCash people have left out a core bit of functionality. There's no category for transactions, so it's impossible to do things like budgeting, etc. Without that, it's just something that I wouldn't use, and I'm stuck running Quicken under Wine (which works marginally, at best).

    Maybe I'm wrong, and they have some type of extensible record format that makes this change easy later (I haven't looked), but it seems like a pretty bad design right now....

  • Gnucash sounds better than Gnocash, pronunciation wise.

    (Gnucash sounds like NewCash, Gnocash sounds like NoCash)
  • First, with Moneydance, you're forking your toll over to once company instead of the other. It is not free (read the license from the download page). Second, if you add up all of the features of the rest of the options you mention, you're not going to add up to last year's version of Quicken but maybe version 1 or 2 from 5 or 6 years ago. That's not to disrespect GnuCash at all - if it meets your needs then by all means, use it. I just think you've painted far too rosy a picture of the current landscape.
  • As for trusting a closed source program with my info: Your information is already in the hands of several closed-source (till their dying breath) companies - Banks & Brokerages. You fret about whether "somebody manages to get ahold of your private finances." If "somebody" refers to a person that cracks your machine, then the fact that your finance app is closed source amounts to jack. Then you need some open source crypto instead. If "somebody" refers to some faceless corporation(s) knowing your financial status and spending habits then unless you keep cash in your mattress, I'm afraid you are out of luck there as well.

    I do like the idea of ecash and wish it had taken off more by now. There are a lot of barriers to adoption there. Seems we need smart cards and the like in meatspace for that type of thing to catch on. I think there are too many "powers that be" that dislike anonymous electronic cash for it to take off without a major public groundswell.
  • Junkbuster does indeed handle SSL proxy and is a breeze to install and configure.
  • Credit cards do have many of the features of ecash but lack a critical one - private anonymous electronic transaction. I would like to have the option of paying "cash" online so large anonymous companies cannot track what I spend and where. If ecash is ridiculous then I suppose privacy and anonymity are ridculous also.
  • According to gnu.org, the g is pronounced aloud, so it would be g-nucash or g-nocash. Neither one sounds like anything, so I'm inclined to agree with you anyway :-).

    void recursion (void)
    {
    recursion();
    }
    while(1) printf ("infinite loop");
    if (true) printf ("Stupid sig quote");
  • I believe there is one called Linux-Kontor, but not very far along. From the Gnucash website, it's intended for business use as well.
  • Exactly what I'd like to have. Ever since they introduced the Crusoe chip and demoed one of those web pads, I've been wanting something like this. I think it should have wireless connection to other computers/devices in the house and to the internet. A docking station mounted at eye level on the wall could serve to recharge it and to hold it while your doing other things. I also think it would be cool if this could be taken into the car and mounted into another docking station which would give it access to power, a hard drive located in the car, and the sound system. This could be used for email, mp3s, and much more.

    Things like this are probably possible to make yourself right now, I just wish I had the money to experiment with things like this. Hopefully they'll be comercially available before long.

  • "linux apps don't have all these features - but who cares about those dumb features anyway??"

    I never said that. Your use of quotation marks there doesn't make sense. Its not a quote, its not even a good paraphrase.

  • Why shouldn't PC's exist in the kitchen? I know my mother for the past ten years wanted to be able to order her groceries online, and store her recipies on the computer. Today, she does both. But to be useful, she has to print out the recipies and take them downstairs, a process she's wished to streamline for quite awhile. Who knows, maybe next year I'll get her a laptop for her kitchen for Christmas.

    Here's an excerpt from my idea of a nicely wired geek house: Disclaimer: None of the following has any basis in fact.

    Picture, if you will, a kitchen equipped with a slim laptop on the house's wireless lan. You feel like a change from your regular diet of ramen and Mt. Dew, so you head for your local online grocer (HomeGrocer [homegrocer.com] in my area) and order up the makings for some seriously good pasta. It arrives the next day, you open your recipie database on the laptop in the kitchen, and begin preparing the meal. While you're waiting for the water to come to a boil, you decide to check your e-mail. (Yes, this is an extremely geeky thing to do, but isn't that sorta the point of a geek house?) This is simple, of course, because you have a laptop sitting next to the fridge which can get out to the Internet through your home lan's gateway (Which happens to have a DSL connection).

    Food preparations are complete, so you alert your geek roommates throughout the house with a quick execution of the ever-useful wall program. Consoles on every computer on the home lan announce "Pasta ready in the kitchen", and dinner is served.

    Perhaps a more modern twist on the above: You have a web pad, running a spiffy Crusoe processor, sitting on the counter in the kitchen. Its Bluetooth network adapter lets the pad access the home lan's Apache server, which has a recipie program written in PHP that stores the recipies (And URL's for all the ingredients that link to the online grocer) in a SQL database. Slick.
  • Oh, that's part of what I'm saying :) Word 5.1/Excel 4 are as far as I go in saying microsoft made anything useful. When the third hard drive on my powerbook went kaput (irony: an ibm part gave apple the worst reliability problem since the apple iii . . .), I actually went back to word 4/excel 3--I had about a 7 disk set that booted, unpacked onto the ramdisk, and still left me a few megs left.

    these days, if you want mail merge, the best way to go is with my patch to lyx :) it's patterned after the old (1.0-5.1) Word interface, but has the things it "should have" had--recursion, elseif, etc. RIght now it's just a source-code patch; when I either get some free time, or teach an interdisciplinary "Economics of Free Software" class, I (or the programming contingent in the class) will convert it to a library, and add the appropriate calls to LyX to use it. /end{plug} :)

    I'd put word4/excel3 as the "minimum" usable wp/spreadsheet, and anything past word4/exce5 as overkill for most purposes.

    As for powerpoint: It's an incredibly poor implementation of a half-way decent idea. I do better with slides from lyx . . .
  • I'm game to try another version [*shudder*], but for the moment, it needs to come precompiled. [But I file bug reports. Lots of them, and usually exotic stuff. Absoft asked me to betatest their now-current Fortran becasue of them]. Compiling is a bit beyond this current box at the office . . . in a few weeks, I'll have a larger box, but . . .[A

    I don't need much from the borders; basically upper & lower lines, and a "lighter" line every five lines so they can trace across the whole sheet.
  • uh, no. If I hit the nail on the head, I apparently got your fingers while I was at it . . .

    I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, saying that what is available now are toys compared to the windows equivalents. Lyx, for example, is miles ahead of word for anything vaguely technical.[B

    More importantly, fifteen year old microsoft products are far ahead of MS Office. It takes significantly more work to perform the same task on Word 6+ as it did with Word 4.0 and 5.1 for the mac. If you're actually trying to get work done, a Mac (or mac emulator, I suppose) and the old MS products are a far better choice.

    When Word 6 came out, MS was force by the market to put 5.1 back on the market. It's *really* that much of a step back.

    The linux choices for spreadsheets and wordprocessors are pretty bad. THis does *not* mean that the current MS choices are reasonable; I'd insist on the old mac versions and a mac to use them with before the newer windows things. Once upon a time, MS made good software (applications, at least). Then came Word 6/Excel 5 . . .

  • I've never tried applixware, for the simple reason that when I chacked, it lacked features that I use on a daily basis. Maybe they've added more; I don't know. The same applies to Abiword. I never checked again, because lyx handles what I need in a wordprocessor more than adequately--in fact, for what I do, better than a classical model word processor *could* do. I didn't spend five full minutes bringing my dissertation into conformance with the university style guidelines. . . .

    When I tried WP/linux, it was to submit an abstract for a conference. We brought the file to a secretarial machine running the same version, and it turned out that it couldn't handle the included postscript images. The downloadable version also doesn't handle equations . . .

    Please don't try to turn what I wrote into any claim that office packages are useful, or that the quantity of features is in any way related to usefullnes. I didn't, can't, and won't say that. However, a spreadsheet should be able to include a line above a cell to show a sum (gnumeric fails here, as do most of the text spread sheet). It should be able to graph the data, or (better yet) it should be able to pipe arbitrary and noncontiguous blocks of data to something that can plot them. Word had useful graphs for miltplie variables in version 4; I think they were also in 3, but it's been a while. I believe that it is still the only one that can reliably handle noncontiguous data (leave out columns); I saw something else try, but it lost the information when it reloaded the file.

    I don't want lots and lots of features. However, Word 4/Excel 3 hardly qualify as bloated, yet they're both more useful than anything I've seen on windows, and anything but lyx on *nix. Word 5.1/Excel 4 added some useful things, but introduced bloat. They're also the last MS products that I think were any good at all. I bought both of them.
  • The more entertaining variation on this is thus:
    Those who do not understand Common Lisp are doomed to replicate it, badly, in any sizable application.
  • GnuTaxes [sourceforge.net] is formulating an approach.

    I don't think it's likely to be ready for another year at best, and I think they need to step back and consider having a language formally made to represent tax rules rather than informally layering javascript and GLADE together in an XML file, but it's "under way."

  • Dave Peticolas has been a "CVS machine," generating a patch file against the last CVS update virtually every day.

    The development of GnuCash has been pretty regular, with some minor improvements taking place almost every day.

    (Aside: I've got a bunch of changes to the reporting code that I'm testing now, and preparing to commit...)

    It is likely that there will continue to be lots of minor releases, in much the same way that Linux has a new experimental release every week.

  • It's generally (IMO) a good idea to keep your own accounts so you can double-check the bank's. Even banks make mistakes from time to time, for various reasons. Not often perhaps, but noticing when they do is a Good Thing :) Not that I do it, but that's partly because I don't have a good accounting program (Quicken doesn't count for a number of reasons, including the fact that I'd have to reboot to use it, which makes it horrendously inconvenient) Daniel
  • You'd be better off with Word 4.0 or 5.1 for the mac than anything but LyX.

    I think what you're saying is correct, but here's the flip side of it -- I'd rather have Word 5.1, Excel 4.0 and PowerPoint 3 than the current version of Office. Whatever additional productivity I gain from all the bells and whistles is lost every time I need to plow through the incomprehensible help system to figure out how to do something trivial. I realize that it is useful for somebody, but for my own purposes the last five years of office suite development have only made the software more difficult for me to use.

    I would jump at a Linux suite that implemented 1995 MS Office functionality, especially with a modern integration system like KOffice will have.
  • Why enter all of your money and handlings automatically when the bank can do it for you?

    Because:

    1. my credit cards aren't from my bank;
    2. my brokerage accounts aren't from my bank.

    Also, can I control into which categories the bank dumps transactions? No, I don't want their idea of which category or categories some particular credit card purchase belongs in, I want my idea.

    (Also, my bank doesn't own my wallet, and I keep a record of cash transactions in Quicken 2000 - which, by the way, also implements that "dead desktop-centric model".)

  • I have a checking account at First Union and I'm also the author of Moneydance [seanreilly.com] (a competitor to GnuCash). I've gotten online banking mostly working in my development version - downloading transactions and synchronization works, but I'm still working on bill-payment.

    It should only be another couple of months before I release a beta version of Moneydance 3.0 which will include online banking as well as a bunch of other features.
  • Don't worry about the lack of Moneydance support. If I ever get sick of it, I'll just open source it myself (I'm the author). Also, don't worry about being "locked in" to using Moneydance - I will give the file read/write source code to anyone who asks.

    It's not open source right now because I would like it to become something that can support me full time and there just doesn't seem to be any way to do that in the true open source model.

    In the future I plan on providing the source code to registered users, but under a license that is less "free" than the GPL or BSD licenses.

    FYI: Online banking and investment tracking are now working in the development version. I just have to clear up some crypto issues (and RSA licensing fees) before I can release it.

  • Erm... I know you can get .debs and .rpms containing GnuCash, but I'm unaware of the equivalent for Slackware. Slackware also doesn't appear to do dependency management (this package needs this other package, etc.), and GnuCash has a ton of dependencies.

    I tried installing it from sources once. After diving three-deep in Perl module dependencies, I got frustrated and gave up.

    Don't misunderstand; I'm not a Slackware basher. It's what's installed on my laptop and desktop, and I've used it for years. But I really appreciate letting the computer worry about what I have installed, and what depends on what.

    In a lame attempt to bring this back on-topic, does anyone know how hard it would be to add a unified transaction entry method to GnuCash?

    Schwab

  • I actually like some software that has someone to be held accountable for things just like that. Who would I take to court if some loser added that 'functionality' to an open source program?

  • Yeah, this is the killer feature as far as I am concerned. I never used to keep my checkbook balanced before, but with Quicken able to nab my transaction info right from the bank itself, I was in nirvana. For once, I knew exactly how much money I had!

    For some reason, right after the 1st of January, this feature died on my in Quicken 98 (apparently, an error on the bank's side... I haven't tried calling them yet on it. I dread trying to explain an error message to some phone-based bank teller...).

    I noticed, however, that my bank does offer web-based banking, with the ability to download transactions in a .QIF file... which means that maybe I could use GNUCash and import the .QIF to reconcile my bank balance... Then I could stop running Quicken under VMWare :)

    I think, way back, I took a look at GNUCash right after the two preceding projects merged, and they did say something about online banking. Thing is, I'd figure that the protocols used in online banking are not a very open standard. It's something MS Money and Quicken can do, because they are Big Reputable Software Firms, and not a buncha guys writing software for the common good (in the eyes of bankers, anyhow).

    Hm. I winder. Do banks use a small number of web-banking software, or does each roll their own? Seems to me that if it's the former, GNUCash could grab banking data similar to the way some scripts can rip stories out of /. and other web sites. It would just have to authenticate you in oreder to access the relevant pages.
  • It is true that taxes vary state to state - but I'm just thinking of the normal federal taxes.

    What I was thinking is that you could develop some way to parse the forms and simply provide an interface that would add columns for you and also do table lookups (such as look up adjusted income in tax table and fill in box b). If you had a decent parser, it might be possible to adjust for small changes in forms and update tables from the IRS site automatically - so mostly you wouldn't have to be working with REALLY dull business rules, just ultra-cool parsing technology. Besides, like I said, the vast majority of forms that people use never really change. Programs like TurboTax are great if you really need help understanding just what taxes you need to pay or forms you need, but if you're willing to take the time to know what forms you need on your own, a program that would simply help calculate thigns for you (and perhaps even provide context sensitive help right from the IRS instructions) would be really handy.

    Unfortunatley as far as I know, you can only get the forms in PDF or postscript (or PCL, but would you want to parse that?) which makes for a difficult parsing task either way you go.

    They do provide SGML formatted documents at the IRS website - but only for instructions! Oh well, at least the tables would be easy to get to.

  • Yourself (Score:2)

    by / ( 33804 )
    I actually like some software that has someone to be held accountable for things just like that. Who would I take to court if some loser added that 'functionality' to an open source program?

    You'd have to hold yourself liable, since you have the source and can compile it yourself. You could find some lawyer to initiate a stock-holder lawsuit on behalf of your household and with yourself as chief stock holder: "Hey everyone! Watch me pay someone else to take money out of my left pocket and put it into my right pocket!"

    If the market demands it, some company will spring up and charge people for GnuCash on the promise that they have audited it for bugs and assume the burden of any financial losses acrued owing to bugs. Don't you worry.
  • If you're interested in finance packages (personal and professional) that are open-source or web-based, I highly recommend Todd Boyle's list of links [gldialtone.com] - an excellent starting point.

    And, of course I'm always trying to garner support for my own web-based accounting project, WebAccountant [webaccountant.org].

  • Better solution:

    New story category - Software announcements
  • Note - This may be a little offtopic, but it does involve my desire to use GNUcash in conjunction with my bank. Maybe some of you share this same situation...

    I'm doing my best to switch over all of my home computing tasks to Linux from NT 4.0. So far I can do in Linux all I did in NT, except for downloading my daily banking transactions, which was done with Quicken. I've got an extra computer with an NT 4.0 install just to handle this.

    So what I'd like to do is run GNUcash under Linux and go to First Union's (the bank I use) web site and simply *look* at what's cleared and then match it up with the transactions I enter in GNUcash. It's not as convenient as doing automatic downloads with Quicken, but it's good enough for my purposes.

    However, First Union's web site will only let me go as far as looking at a summary of all my accounts using Netscape (w/128 bit crypto) under Linux. They won't let me access the "Interim Statement" page which tells me the specific transactions that cleared. I have a feeling this is similar to the problem Fox had with Linux users accessing their web site <a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/10/221424 7.shtml">(refer to this slashdot article).</a>

    I was able to contact a guy in First Union's online banking department (Ken Stewart in Richmond) who might be able to do something about it. I explained how online banking and the web in general should be about open standards that do not depend on using one or two popular operating systems (you know which ones). I told Ken that a First Union cust. svc. rep. even told me that I'm not the first one with this problem and that other Linux users have been complaining (which is true). To bring the point home, I then explained how their web based bill pay system (which is handled by www.mybills.com, a third party) works perfectly under Linux.

    Maybe this guy will get some wheels turning to fix this problem, maybe not. If there are any other First Union customers out there having this problem, be vocal and get your call escalated above front-line customer service. Thanks for your time.

  • Your post should probably be labeled a troll, but I'll bite anyway. First of all, the guy you responded to certainly did not hit the nail on the head. He didn't even mention Applixware so I hardly consider that a complete review of the current state of linux office suites.

    Second, why do I need windows to use an office suite. More importantly, why do I need a bloated office suite in the first place. We use wordperfect suite here in my office and I don't use a tenth of the crap they pile in these things. All I really need is a decent word processor (which I beleive Wordperfect supplies) and a good spreadsheet. Packing uneeded, seldom used features into an application is what's wrong with many windows applications to begin with, why should linux applications be striving to emulate that?

    Granted, there's alot of work to be done, but I think there's some good software out there already and its getting better all the time.

  • Full-fledged accounting programs are hard to come by in the opensource world.

    FreeMoney [freemoney.org] and Cratchit [cratchit.org] are two examples of attempts.

    I spent time chatting with people at The Bazzar and LinuxWorld. Lo and behold, others are interested in such, but not enough to spend money.

    LinuxFund.Org thinks no one wants an accounting package, enough to pay for one.

    One group of CPA's turned programmers would be happy to code the inital GL/AP/AR /basic Invoicing if they could get enough money to pay food bills/basics for 30 days. They have spent 10+years writting accounting packages, and WANT to do an OpenSource package. They just want to get SOME money for the effort.

    Me, I've offered $500 toward the project...assuming they do some documentation of what the $5000 they feel they need for 30 days of work will get them. PostgreSQL, Python, Zope and TCL/TK as the tools for the project.

    Does any /.ers have suggestions for funding methods for these accountants?

  • Linux is best suited to other tasks (servers, high end number crunching, etc.)

    I don't know about you, but I utilize my Linux box for much more than file serving on my network. MP3's, Quake, and even word processing are constantly used, and a personal financial manager like Gnucash is greatly appreciated around these parts. Another step towards the elimination of Microsoft is always welcome; after all, geeks have bank accounts too. Saying programs like Quicken and Gnucash are simply "glorified checkbooks" is to belittle their usefulness; it's sort of like calling Linux a "server".

  • Do banks use a small number of web-banking software, or does each roll their own?

    Though I am not a banker nor a banking industry expert, my guess is that most banks have rolled their own web-banking software rather than go with any pre-packaged solutions that may exist. My main reason for saying this is that, in my experience, banking (and other financial institutions) seem to have the idea that the way they run their business and keep track of things is entirely different (and much more complicated) than any other bank (or equivalent financial inst.). By believing this (which isn't as true as they would like to believe) they continue to produce their own proprietary, back end software solutions. The result is an environment and a mess of custom code that would be difficult if not impossible to use pre-packaged solutions. But of course, if there were pre-packaged solutions that made this possible for a given bank, they likely would not go for it as their ways of doing business are "entirely different" from any other banks and so outside software could not do the job.

  • I think the problem with tax software is that it is not uniform over time or location.
    If you can find a team of developers in every region where the tax is different (country to country -even US state to state AFAIK) that will be willing to do nothing except update the mundane aspects of the program (ie. business rules) on a regular basis, then you could be on to a winner.
    Otherwise you will be left with a piece of software which is only usable to a small subset of the community, and even then, probably will be out of date for a good percentage of the time.
  • Sorry to the linux tail-light chasers who have been trying to emulate Quicken97, but online banking is the way to go.

    Why enter all of your money and handlings automatically when the bank can do it for you?

    I do all my credit card, savings, checking, and money market through one bank (well fargo) that puts it all online securely so I can get it from anywhere, anytime.

    Why on earth would you want to follow the dead desktop-centric model of Gnucash?

  • Quite frankly I don't want any one institution having all my data, of what was spent where and on what and how much I am really worth.

    Give me a break - the bank's computers are easily far more secure than your windows machine. Particularly if you are a cable modem/dsl user.

  • Probably because if you bank at more than one institution (and IMO, smart 'shoppers' do)

    Wrong - as you go up the foodchain in banking, the more consolidated your services become. Deposit seven figures at most good banks and you go through one liason for all your banking needs.

  • Your entire post seems to amount to sour grapes - "linux apps don't have all these features - but who cares about those dumb features anyway??"

    Some of us out there aren't satisfied with mediocore knock-offs.

  • OFX has long been a goal of GnuCash; I've been watching for a long time. It appears that they implemented something and it didn't quite live up to their expectations so they're taking a difference approach. Check out this page [linas.org].

    I hope this comes about soon. I've become quite reliant upon online transactions, etc. I can't make the switch till they get OFX in (I even made a half hearted offer of help once, but received no response).

  • Let's get serious about what's out there in spreadsheets and word processors; we're not even comparable to the late 80's.

    Word Processors:

    WordPerfect. It works, except for the deleted features. You can't print a WP file with an embedded postscript on a non-linux machine (such as windows); it puts a warning message about unsupported features instead. Overall, though, this is a single functioning wordprocessor.

    Lyx. But it's not really a wordprocessor. It flatly beats any word processor for what it does, and the use of lyx or raw latex for technical writing is really a preferences issue--my tendency would be raw latex, but lyx shows me my equations in a form I can edit directly from the keyboard, and tends to use far less
    keystrokes than raw latex, so I prefer it. If you want to wrap text around a table or figure, or do certain things with table formatting, lyx inherits all of latex's warts. Unfortunately, these are part of what is expected of a word processor in common business use. ALso, to print on pre-printed forms, the micro-management that is antithetical to latex in necessary; lyx never will do such things (nor should it).

    Staroffice. Let's be serious. If you can live with crashes, and have enough memory, you can get by with 5.1. It's probably no worse than the current versions of Word. And then there's the missing documentation and miscelanous quirks. Don't even think of running it with less than 48Mb--and memory doesn't make everything faster--it still takes forever to load with .5G of memory. I really haven't used swriter 3.1, so can't comment on it.

    The rest: let's face it; they're just plain not finished.

    Word processor summary: unless latex is appropriate to your circumstances, the only choice is wordperfect. I preseme the commercial version interacts with other versions of wordperfect better than the downloadable one. You'd be better off with Word 4.0 or 5.1 for the mac than anything but LyX.

    Spreadsheets:

    even worse.

    Gnumeric. Maybe someday it will be finished. There's more there than there used to be. Want a graph? A border on a cell? Forget it; you can't have it yet.

    wingz. sure, it can be downloaded free, but its day seems to come and gone. And a single crash where it scrambles my data beyond recovery (messed with the original file rather than using a working copy, it appears) is one more than I tolerate from any application, ever. The graphing features aren't up to Excel 3.0 from the mid 80's.

    Miscellaneous text-based sheets: OK, if visicalc did what you needed, I suppose.

    staroffice 5.1. You better have a lot of horsepower again, and being willing to put up with the crashes. I've had files that would crash it *every* time the second time I tried to print to postscript, and sometimes the first print attempt as well. You also get the attempt to take over your entire computer with a new desktop, attempts to force you to it's own "work" folder--I have found no way to tell it to use ~ in a way it will remember; a popup box every time you try to use any format other than starcalc5, trying to get you to choose it instead (with that as the default), (did I mention lots of crashes yet?), limited graph choices, a scripting/macro facility that is presumabley documented *somewhere*. ANd you better have a minimum of 64M.

    Staroffice 3.1. The closest thing to usable I have found. Isn't *as* aggressive in trying to take over your life, crashes less than 5.1, can sort of run on this 24M machine. ON the other hand, the time to paste once formula into a 200x15 region is measured in minutes (I launched lynx and was to about the end of the
    word processor section and it was still trying to paste). Easier to configure and adjust than 5.1, but you can get wierd results printing. Screen writes seem to be bad even for motif (as in overdone and high overhead); forget using it remotely over a cable modem that can sustain 500kbit/second

    Summary: None of the contenders match up to excel 3.0 in performance, usability, stability, or features.

    Financial:

    Gnucash sounds like a nice step, but it also sounds like it still hasn't
    caught up to quicken 1.0--little things like electronic transfer still missing if I'm readng this correctly.

    hawk

  • GnuCash vs. PHASAR (Score:3)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @09:45AM (#1240011) Homepage Journal

    "...versus what?" I hear you cry.

    PHASAR was a home financial package for DOS systems, later ported to the Amiga (where I've been using it for the last several years). Sadly, it looks like PHASAR can't handle the Y2K transition, and I was hoping GnuCash would be able to replace it (thereby allowing me to fully decommission my Amiga).

    Alas, in a sense, I've been "spoiled" by PHASAR, as it seems to operate on a different philosophy, and I couldn't warm up to the last release of GnuCash.

    Here's the issue: As near as I can determine, in GnuCash, you set up different accounts (checking, credit cards, etc.). When you want to record a transaction, you open the appropriate account in a window, enter the transaction(s), and close it. Perfectly straightforward.

    With PHASAR, however, all accounts are open simultaneously. You specify the account with every transaction you enter. This may seem like a lot more typing, but it isn't; PHASAR has auto-complete, so you can type the first letter or two of the account and it will fill in the rest.

    Now it just so happens that I keep all my receipts, so I can enter them into the computer. With PHASAR, I can just key in the receipts as I find them. With GnuCash, I'd have to separate them into their relevant accounts first. This is a bummer; the computer should be doing the sorting for me. It is the primary thing that has kept me from moving to GnuCash.

    If GnuCash got a "unified" transaction entry window, I'd convert (extra credit: reading old PHASAR data files). I have no idea how hard it would be to add such a thing; I haven't looked at the code. From what I can tell, it's an unholy mixture of C, Perl, and GUILE/Scheme. (If you're using a distro that isn't package-based, like Slackware, it's an absolute b*tch to install.)

    Comments welcome.

    Schwab

  • Re:Too bad it doesn't... (Score:3)

    by Rombuu ( 22914 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @11:05AM (#1240012)
    The software doesn't control your account, it merely downloads statements from your financial institution and reconciles these statements against the transactions you have entered into your computer...

    But your just here to bash Microsoft rather than have a real conversation, so back away from the keyboard and get back to class kid-o.


  • Too bad it doesn't... (Score:3)

    by Rombuu ( 22914 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @08:14AM (#1240013)
    ...interface with my bank and brokerages systems and automatically update my accounts and balances. This is one of the nicest features of Microsoft Money.

    Anyone know if this sort of functionality is even planned?

  • Any OS tax software? (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @11:04AM (#1240014)
    I know this is a little unrelated, but it is at least topical - does anyone know of any OS projects to develop something like TurboTax? I'ts really handy having software to help fill out all of the forms I need, but it annoys me buying a new version every year just in case something should change!

    I wouldn't mind putting more effort into verification of what results the software actually produced, as long as it could help just fill in forms initially, and knew how to generate a 1040PC formatted document for the printer.

  • ftp.gnucash.org not responding, try http (Score:3)

    by d^2b ( 34992 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @07:56AM (#1240015) Homepage
    The sources and binaries are also available
    via http [gnucash.org]

  • CBB (Score:3)

    by noeld ( 43600 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @10:01AM (#1240016) Homepage
    I have been using CBB [sourceforge.net] for a while now.

    Not as fancy as Quicken but has worked well and reliably.

    Last time I looked at gnucash it required a bunch (4?) libraries that I did not have and was not excited about getting. So has this improved?

    Noel

    RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix [rootprompt.org]

  • Why Free Financial Software? (Score:3)

    by adriccom ( 44869 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @01:08PM (#1240017) Homepage

    Here's hoping GNUCash speeds on it's way past the functionality of existing commercial programs.

    Here's why:

    Last week, a client of ours started seeing fatal data corruption in their financial software. It had been a couple weeks since they had migrated to the new '2000' version of the software. The problem is so bad that they had to restore from backup and re-enter 1/2 day's transactions by hand. A quick check of the SIG on the ISV's website for the product showed at least one other user with the exact same problems, and at least one other consultant advising a freeze on '2000' installations for the forseeable future (he had seen the problem before, too).

    It's Monday now and the client has been backing up his data files twice a day, running is single user mode, trying to avoid any more trouble while he waits for the vendor to issue a patch. This is bad enough, but his only other options are:

    • Go back to the '1999' version, which is known to be more stable. Of course this would mean inputing about two weeks worth of transactions by hand. (!)
    • Go to another vendor's software. Of course this would mean manually entering all of the data for (at least) 2000 manually (!!)

    We've been trying to convince these folks to go to a free software solution for awhile, but this isn't the way we wanted to do it. Their entire business is locked up in the proprietary database of this (expensive) commercial software...If the ISV screws this up further, they'll have an easy court case to win and no business for the three years it takes to settle.


    Happy Monday All!

    adric

  • Look at OFX (was:Too bad it doesn't...) (Score:3)

    by RocketJeff ( 46275 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @09:24AM (#1240018) Homepage
    Look at Open Financial Exchange [ofx.net].

    This is the standard that was started by CheckFree, Intuit and Microsoft in early 1997 and seems to be what most banks are supporting for communication with financial software.

    My bank lets me download a file in this format, while Discover Card seems to use some direct link from Quicken and MS Money. The latest version of the format seems to be XML.

    The specifications are available (in .pdf) on the site, as well as information on certifying software that uses the standard. I don't know if GnuCash supports OFX, but it would be nice if it did.

  • Relieving the server strain a bit (Score:3)

    by dsplat ( 73054 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @07:55AM (#1240019)
    Since I was one of the first in to read the article, I went to the GNU Cash site and grabbed the text of the announcement. Here's the feature list:

    Now for the details. This release signifies the switch from Motif to Gnome as our GUI toolkit. The build process should also be a lot easier.

    Key Features:


    • Gnome/Gtk based
    • Canvas based register
    • New reporting engine based on scheme
    • Lots of options are now configurable
    • Ability to reparent accounts
    • A really slick/polished interface


    Their ftp server is already having some trouble keeping up. Somebody, please mirror them quick or post a list of known mirror sites. They don't have a list on their site from what I could find.

  • Kudos to the GNUCash team. (Score:3)

    by TRoLL. ( 141847 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @07:53AM (#1240020)
    I installed a Linux workstation (PC) and a Linux server (also a PC w/gnucash) in a small pizza shop that it local to the area not more than a few months ago.

    Their previous application, "Pizza Shop," was DOS based program for accouting, etc, written in QuickBASIC of all things and was an utter piece of shit. They paid big bucks for this too.... and now GNUCash totally blows it away. It's great to see the free software community come through and deliver such good quality applications.

  • Re:Too bad it doesn't... (Score:3)

    by aggressivepedestrian ( 149887 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @11:03AM (#1240021)
    Nor does it integrate seamlessly with a tax program. I'm pretty diligent about keeping records in Quicken, and, at the end of the year, I spend 20 bucks on TurboTax, import my Quicken transactions, and file online. Could such functionality ever come out of an open source model?

  • HTTP Download is working (Score:4)

    by RSevrinsky ( 10305 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @07:59AM (#1240022) Homepage
    Here's the URL:

    http://www.gnucash.org/pub/gnucash [gnucash.org]

    As a side note, I'd like to point out that this release is really big news because the GnuCash team finally realized that deploying on 3 GUI widget platforms simultaneously (Motif, GTK, and Qt) was sapping at their development time and just leading to breakage. The previous post-xacc releases were a huge pain to build, which lead to the emergence of other Quicken substitutes like Gnofin [sourceforge.net].

    From my initial test run, it looks like GnuCash has a new customer. Congratulations!

    - Richie

  • open source money (Score:4)

    by Marvin_OScribbley ( 50553 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @08:32AM (#1240023) Homepage Journal
    Managing your finances from your PC is good. Managing your financies with free software is better. Why? If you are like me, do you really trust a closed source program with all your important, confidential information? Sure, maybe a credit card number here and there to buy stuff over the web, but there is a level of protection there. If somebody steals your number your liability is limited. But if somebody manages to get ahold of your private finances, it's less like somebody stole your wallet and more like somebody broke into your house and looked at all your private letters.

    It seems to me that there are two benefits to an open source financial program. First, you can be as sure of your security as you are willing to study the source code. This means that you are better protected both against attackers AND against the off chance of backdoors or other security problems that might (but probably wouldn't be) introduced by the programmers of a proprietary program.

    The other benefit is one that is not yet realized. Why not integrate real GNUcash into the program GNUcash? A kind of "open source money" similar to Digicash or whatever. Not only would all the security concerns of the technical community be satisfied (untraceable, unforgeable, no key escrows or whatever) but while we're at it we can revolutionize the monetary systems. World domination with Linux? Try world domination by controlling (and freeing) the world's money supply!

    Hey, it could happen.

  • finally (Score:4)

    by bartyboy ( 99076 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @07:52AM (#1240024)
    I can finally keep track of those 200,000 credit card numbers that I "received" last week.

    *grin*
  • The initial priority has been to get the GUI working and sufficiently featureful.

    Now that that is working fairly well, it starts to make sense to try to automate the creation of transactions, which includes:

    • Scheduling transactions automagically
    • Loading transactions from QIF files
    • Loading transactions from OFX files

    Surprisingly, a critical issue with all three of these things is that of creating a suitable user interface.

    In particular, with QIF and OFX input, there needs to be a user interface to control the translation from the data file's set of accounts to those that the user has set up in GnuCash.

    I've written a pretty slick QIF parser; deployment of that has been blocked due to the need to have a front end to let the user decide which account to use in GnuCash. The same will be true for OFX files.

    Note that some financial institutions generate OFX/QIF files that omit entirely the account, thereby requiring that you manually set up a destination account for the expense.

  • Re:Who cares? Online banking is where its at (Score:5)

    by xant ( 99438 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @09:09AM (#1240026) Homepage
    - Planning ahead. Your online bank will tell you what your balance is now, but a good personal finance app will tell you what your balance is at the end of the month. Which is critical when you want that balance always to be in the black.
    - Organizing several accounts (my wife and I have at least 6 to our name. Most of them have online access, bill pay, etc., which I use religiously. But it doesn't cover everything.)
    - Tracking non-account-based assets (a home, cars, etc.) To be fair, I didn't see anything to indicate that GnuCash would do this. But it should, or I won't be able to use it.
    - Calendaring/scheduling. Your bank can schedule bill pays, but can it schedule an entire loan payoff? This overlaps with planning ahead, but having the visual view of the calendar is vital. GnuCash should have this too.

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