Gnucash 1.3.0 Beta Released

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.

Comments

HTTP Download is working

[RSevrinsky]

Here's the URL:

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

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.

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

- Richie

open source money

[Marvin_OScribbley]

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

[bartyboy]

I can finally keep track of those 200,000 credit card numbers that I "received" last week.

*grin*

Priority #1: The Register

[Christopher B. Brown]

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

[xant]

- 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.