Moneydance - Cross-Platform Personal Finance

sreilly self-promotes: "Moneydance 2003 has just been released for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. This program is a completely cross-platform replacement for Quicken or MS Money. This is the first time that online banking and online bill payment has been available in a made-for-Linux application. It also has features that aren't available in Quicken such as an extension mechanism that lets developers easily add and distribute new features to the program."

Comments

Thanks but no thanks

[Drunken Coward]

I'm not going to trust my personal finances to a company that refuses to release their code under the GPL. Who knows what kind of data this software is gathering, not to mention the fact that I've never even heard of this company. If I don't use Microsoft Money because of these issues, why would I use something presented by an even less reputed source?

And forget auditing it myself, with an EULA that says:

You may not reverse engineer, decompile, translate, adapt, or disassemble the Software, nor shall you attempt to create the source code from the object code for the Software.

I'll wait until something free (as in beer and speech) before I think it's secure enough for my data, thanks.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[DarkKnightRadick]

To add onto that, it's not even free as in "full featured and free".

All they offer is a free demo. Bloody wankers.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[DShard]

If only they had a gnucash version for windows... Then i could get my wife to dump that poorly planned spreadsheet.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

And how do you think this company would stay in business if the application was free?

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[bmongar]

I'm not going to trust my personal finances to a company that refuses to release their code under the GPL

So you don't use banks or credit cards then? Because I don't know of a bank or credit card company that has opened up their software.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[sporty]

It was funny. I was on bugtraq, and someone posted some code, showing how a system (freebsd at the time), could be exploited. Iditoically enough, I trusted the source after giving it a quick look and ran it. Somehow, I missed something.. a call to drop to the shell and execute a ping -f.

So tell me. Do you go through the pains of examining the source of every application you use?

But would you say, someone would eventually catch it in code? Sure, it'd a good argument. After all, web servers, name servers, XFree86... they have bugs, people catch them.

So here's my next question. There's one fundamental difference. If everyone ran a tampered copy of other free softwares, the damage would be minimal compared to say, transmitting your financial information to a server in Java (the island, not the language). After all, after I realized what that bugtraq code did, I killed the app. No permanent reprecussions.

Do you trust MS to not transmit your financial information when you do a software update? Do you use a machine with no net connection to prevent your financial info from spreading around? ANd if it did spread out once using GPL softare, who's fault is it?

Opensource isn't a panacea. It's a methodology. It's a way of making software secure over time, if people can contribute. It's about anyone going in and making improvements to their copy, or hell.. breaking it. It's not about instantaneous security. After all, did you audit your last linux install to maek sure it doesn't transmit your shadow file off to Alan Cox, since he's become a nut and hates all linux users now? (Not really.. but you get the idea).

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[dreamchaser]

Translation: I don't want to pay anyone for their hard work in putting together any piece of cross platform software.

Seriously, software and politices are NOT the same thing. People need to grow up a little. I could maybe see the arguement of wanting to see the source, but free as in beer and speech just shows what you are really after; a free ride.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[ColdGrits]

"I'll wait until something free (as in beer and speech) before I think it's secure enough for my data, thanks."

Well write one and release it then.

Go on, if it is that easy to do, DO IT.

I dare you.

Put your money where your mouth is and develop/release such a program.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

So tell me. Do you go through the pains of examining the source of every application you use?

Not the point. The point is: At least with OSS I *can*.

So here's my next question. There's one fundamental difference.

Question?

Do you trust MS to not transmit your financial information when you do a software update?

No, I do not.

Do you use a machine with no net connection to prevent your financial info from spreading around?

Neither practical nor necessary if I simply know what the app is doing. Why is that so goddamn much to ask? I paid money for the app! Why is it such a goddamn bother to know what it does?!

ANd if it did spread out once using GPL softare, who's fault is it?

Who's fault? Mine. Exactly how I want it to be.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[DarkKnightRadick]

I'm guessing they're new to slashdot. :)

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[timmyf2371]

Have you ever downloaded any app from Sourceforge or the like? If so, were you familiar with the company?

Why wait until something is free as in beer? Do you not believe in rewarding coders for their work?

I take it as you are a GPL promoter that you have read and understood the entire source code for the GNU/Linux distro which you use and every app which you use. If not, why not? Who knows what kind of data your distro may be sending back to the vendor?

Have you ever shopped online? A lot of the shopping carts on ecommerce sites are also proprietary. How do you know that the vendor of the shopping cart doesn't know all your shopping habits?

Tim

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[prinzip]

The Kompany sells software and show theirs sources... ;-)

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[BeerVarmint]

Dude, that's very standard stuff. It is in the boilerplate from every attorneys office. Don't thing everything is such a conspiracy theory. I write a medical database package; and I haven't released the code. Just like almost every other software company; they just want to make a buck from what they have created.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[sporty]

Anonymous Cowards Suck

Now that I've gotten that out of my system...

ANd if it did spread out once using GPL softare, who's fault is it?

Who's fault? Mine. Exactly how I want it to be.

If you have an affinity for OSS, that's great. I commend you. If you find a bug, report it to the author with a fix, or whatever. Really. If your quarrel is that they didn't do OSS, just ignore them. You have Money, Quicken, Excel...etc..

Just don't expect code to be completely secure just 'cause it's GPL. If that were true, explain why OS/2 has fewer bugs. Explain why Redhat linux and Windows both have a relatively high number of exploits each, before patching. And only blame yourself when your acct number gets out, in probably a rare occurance, only because your machine is networked. Or your screen was temptest'd..

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

1) He probably doesn't trust his personal finances to a credit card company. I sure wouldn't. I trust them only to do what they say they will do in their agreement.

2) Credit card companies are heavily regulated because of their obvious position of power over consumers. ClosedSourceCo casually disclaims all warranties and laughs, and keeps the source code too.

I personally have filed a handful of bug reports over Quicken, including cosmetic bugs, printing problems, and downright ERRORS. They are never fixed, because they only effect a few people or aren't important enough to Intuit.

When it comes to my own finances, I'll take the source code any day. I think most folks (including yourself) would admit that having the source code is better than not having the source code, no matter what the dollar cost.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, he wants to pay as little as possible and get as much as possible. Do you do any different? Do you avoid using coupons or going to sales because, shucks, they sure worked hard.

Folks, KEEP DEMANDING free/Free software, and you'll get it eventually. This ain't a charity for the software industry!

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the point. The point is: At least with OSS I *can*.

I guess that would be a "No"

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like Ashcroft says, if you want to be anonymous then you must be hiding something.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Jeff DeMaagd]

As far as I'm concerned, there is a significant difference between demanding the most for your money and demanding everything for nothing, mostly because it is a divide by zero.

If you aren't paying any money, you can't really threaten to pay less money or threaten to use someone else's product. because there's really no gain or loss on the part of the producer.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[_Sprocket_]

Opensource isn't a panacea. It's a methodology. It's a way of making software secure over time, if people can contribute.

Indeed. You are completely on the mark with this point. The Open Source methodology isn't a silver bullet. It is no talisman. It is no guarantee to secure systems.

But. This methodology is a first step towards peer review. It is a part of a proven process. So while its not pixie dust, it is a good move.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo! Fight the power brother, I'm with you! For instance, I certainly don't trust something as important as my stomach to KFC. Who knows what is in those seven secret herbs and spices? If they don't open up their recipe, then I'm not going to eat it.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[term8or]

To say the obvious... just because you can see the source code to an application does not mean that the binary of that application is secure. The words "compiler exploit" come to mind.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[wfrp01]

I don't know of a bank or credit card company that has opened up their software.

Here's one. I'm not saying this is the norm, but it has happened. More importantly, it will continue happening.

I agree with your point, though. You can't always find GPL's apps where you want them. Personally, I still prefer them, if they are available. Not only can I see the source code, but a lot of other people can too. And yes, I do occasionally look at source code, and tweak a fiddly bit here or there. More importantly to me, however, is that GPL's software doesn't tie me to a particular vendor's product. What happens when the company that makes SuperApp goes out of business? What happens when said company gets greedy, and quadrulples the charge for the next upgrade? What happens when you don't want to upgrade, but are forced to, because a security flaw has been found that the company no longer cares to fix? What if the programmer who did all the work at said company leaves and would like to continue building on his own work?

And to those who say GPL advocates promote starving programmers: Bah Humbug. People do make money w/ GPL'd software. See Trolltech, for example. In their case, they leverage people's desire to produce proprietary code to fund the development of GPL'd software.

I still rely on a proprietary application or two, but by and large I've been able to transition to doing almost everything I need to do using free software. I made this transition specifically to avoid the traps and pitfalls of using proprietary software. So to me, "it runs on Linux" is no reason to use a program. Even if it's a useful program, I'll search high and low for an alternative. Even if an open source alternative is not as featurful, if it meets my needs, in the long run I find I avoid a lot of headaches.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[JustAnotherReader]

I'm not going to trust my personal finances to a company that refuses to release their code under the GPL

Quicken and MS Money both send their data to the financial institution as XML is a format known as "Open Financial Exchange" or simply OFX

Since OFX is an open standard and the data is encrypted via SSL then all this product is doing is taking data you enter via a GUI and converting it to an OFX message. I say "only" but in fact that's quite a lot of work.

I've been involved in writing the receiving end of this software at a major Californian bank and it's kind of nice that most of our work is aimed at meeting the OFX specification. If your product can work with that spec then certifying it with Quicken and MS Money is not too difficult.

BTW, on a funny note, while Intuit has quite an extensive QA process that we must go through to get our software certified to work with Quicken, Microsoft's certification consist of "Do you work with Quicken? Great, you're certified"

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[geekoid]

it is about the companies confidence in the product. I mean if you open the source, people will look at it, and it won't take too many issues before the company is a laughing stock in the financial world.

The company could display their code, but keep it under a proprietary copyright liscense. I mean, books do it all the time.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[_Sprocket_]

Translation: I don't want to pay anyone for their hard work in putting together any piece of cross platform software.

If he was wanted to do that, he'd be better off just keeping his mouth shut and dipping in to the warez scene. Sure - this may be niche software, but then the scene is rife with such (warez is as more about sheer sizes of collections and packrat mentality than commercial value). He doesn't need source code to get the application for free.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard of them, they used to bring their code around to Apple's Java Kitchens.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[CBravo]

the funny thing with CC\bank is that they have strict laws to obide to(at least in the NL). Programs are not yet under such laws.

Disclaimers don't cut it (blah we are not responsible blah).

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[tramm]

Drunken Coward wrote:

I'll wait until something free (as in beer and speech) before I think it's secure enough for my data, thanks.

How about GNU Cash? I've been using it for almost two years now and am very, very pleased with it. It is GPLed, so it is both free beer and speech.

The new business features allowed me to replace SQL-Ledger with it. I'm happily generating invoices and handling payroll with GNU Cash 1.8.2 now.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[dh003i]

People have the right not to use a product if it doesn't meet their terms. It's called freedom.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[istartedi]

If I remember just one thing from ECON courses, it's this: "economics is, in part, the study of producers attempts to supply the insatiable demand of consumers".

The OP exemplifies that insatiable demand, and is perhaps (but probably not) a member of a class of customers that I labled "The Insatiables" when I was in customer service. The Insatiables will always ask for more, not stopping short until the producer becomes an absolute slave. True Insatiables are a rare breed. Most people recognize at some point that commerce is bargaining, and bargaining means compromise. While I was in CR I think I may have heard about 2 or 3 insatiables. The definition that I used was that the manager of the department had cut them pro-rated refund checks and disconnected them from service because they were actually generating negative revenue for the company--slavery on our part, even if only in a minor fashion.

The concerns of the OP could be addressed in a rational fashion by allowing users to view and compile source, but not to redistribute it, and not to receive support for versions compiled with tools and/or configurations other than the "official release". In fact, just about all of RMS's concerns could be addressed in this manner, including his pesky printer problem. The GPL is an effort to address legitimate concerns, but like many such efforts, it goes too far in the other direction.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[tunah]

I'm not going to trust my personal finances to a company that refuses to release their code under the GPL.

If you had said "under a {free|open source} licence", then that would have been an extreme, but reasonable, position. To specify the GPL specifically is religious nonsense. You might prefer to buy from a company that GPLs, but to say that software with some other free license is less trustworthy is absurd - the choice of free license is irrelevant to you if you don't plan to release changes to the software.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[The_K4]

So, what are you hiding?

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[uberdave]

That's why you hand assemble your compiler. That way, you're only vulnerable to processor microcode exploits.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

But they can make money off of the program by selling T-Shirts and support!

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[sporty]

Nono.. opensource isn't about that either. All it is, is about freedom. It's hard to sell opensource software. The only sources of revenue you have is support, documentation, distribution and possibly ignorance. There are probably others.

But back to the confidence thing, look at doom. It wasn't about confidence.. it was about people not making money. They gave it away for free to be nice, and nothign is wrong with that.

Close source is about protecting what's yours.. or laziness to distribute :)

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh? That doesn't make a lot of sense.. basically you are saying that nothing can be free (zero cost), because nobody can "threaten"? I don't remember seeing that in any econ textbooks.

Just check out your supply and demand curves. As supply goes to infinity, price drops to zero. At what point do you get the divide by zero? When it's $0.01 per copy? When it's $0.01 for 1000 copies? When it's $0.01 for 1,000,000 copies?

Besides, the cost with "free" software is not in money you pay to the author, but time you spend. Actually, often you pay this with unfree software too, but you have to pay money to the author on top of it! There's an equilibrium point, depending on how valuable your time is, how much you fear "vendor lock-in", etc.

There's a *lot* more to free markets than what's printed on the price tag.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[fitten]

"So tell me. Do you go through the pains of examining the source of every application you use?

Not the point. The point is: At least with OSS I *can*.
"

No... the point is exactly what he said. You see so many folks touting that they can review the code to make sure that it doesn't do anything they don't like so they trust it. Do they? More often not. So... they blindly trust it assuming that *someone else* has reviewed it and hasn't found such a problem. This is no different than not having the source or using closed source. In either case, you haven't a clue as to what the software is really doing, you just trust that it doesn't do anything bad and then crow that simply having the source code in their possession somehow makes it more trustworthy.

Let me draw a quick parallel. The Windows folks get tricked by having files named ReadThis.bat sent to them via email. They clearly have the source available because it is a BAT file (script). They don't review the code but run it anyway and bad things happen.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[elmegil]

I'd modify his statement a little: if I'm going to use a non-free solution for this, it's going to be one that comes from a company with a reasonable security reputation, and a reasonable rights reputation. I.e. NOT microsoft, and definitely not some fly by night I've never heard of. I.e. Quicken.

Yes, we all have our issues with Intuit lately, but I have found that my copy of Quicken Deluxe 2000 works just fine 3 years later, I don't need all the online bells and whistles that would risk my data being exposed on the web, and it just works. Seems pretty simple to me.

If this app had been open source, so that someone could vett it and make sure it wasn't doing something sneaky, I'd have given it a shot, but the combination of no reputation and no visibility into the code means no dice. (And I have to say I feel pretty uncomfortable with "easy plugins" too).

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[HydeMan]

All software shall not and should not be free. Remember, a well-known government tried to use that model for all things, and it failed. Applied to the software industry, we'd all be stuck with long development cycles with little features. Commercial software is important in motivating the free (as in beer) software movement.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[arkanes]

The plugin thing looks pretty okay, actually, assuming you're going to trust him (I know you just said you aren't, but... :P). Plugins without a digital signiture from him won't load, although the plugin page says the user can force them. Seems like a nice balance between the need for security in a financial app and still giving your end users the ability to modify thier own software.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I really don't understand where you went with that.

My point is that when the product is given at no charge, there's no incentive for the author to give in to the user base's demands. If I am selling a product with 10 features for $300, and the prospective market asks for 15 features for $200, I might give in as it's another $200 in my pocket. If a free product has 10 features and the users want another 5, it doesn't matter. Beggars can't be choosy.

I won't work for free and I won't program for free, and I don't see how I can rightfully demand that someone else to give their work or programs away for free.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[rwsorden]

Spot on, my friend! If I could mod you up, I would. It seems, based on the lack of replies, that you've shut all of the freeloaders, hyporcrites, and loud-mouths down.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[(void*)]

Actually peer review ain't perfect either, but it's a process and that's all we have.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[dreamchaser]

Excellent points, but I do not think that the main thrust of the GPL was to address those legitimate concerns. I'm not opposed to it per se, but it is basically a leftist notion that is incompatible with free market society (hence the term 'copyleft').

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

/tinfoil hat

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Warped-Reality]

You evil capitalist!!

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Skjellifetti]

I'm not going to trust my personal finances to a company that refuses to release their code under the GPL. Who knows what kind of data this software is gathering...

I agree with this. The authors of my financial software have no business snooping on data that is the business of myself and the financial institutions that hold my assets. But there are other problems with closed source financial software:

1. I'm afraid of proprietary data storage formats. I want the ability to push/pull/backup/restore my personal financial data using tools that are not provided by the application. I may want to change financial applications in the future and that means I have to be able to convert from one format to another. Yes, there are standards for financial interchange, but often that means that you cannot move ALL of the data since the standard may not cover every aspect of the data (e.g. a transaction that puts a debit in a checking account and matches it with a debit in a budget account. Sure you can move the checking data, but can you move the budgetary data as well?).

2. I want to fully understand how the reports are generated. There are many ways of calculating the "profit" from an investment. I want to see the calculations and be able to modify them if I don't like the formula used by the application. Didn't MS Excell have problems like this with some of its formulas at one time? Financial formulas must be auditable.

3. I may want to extend the application by adding data fields that the application does not have or put constraints on data that the application does not enforce (mostly important for taxable vs. non-taxable investment accounts).

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

How typical of the Slashdot community, mod this guy's post as a troll because he dares speak the truth about the almighty GPL. Typical of liberals in general; don't debate the facts, simply shout down anyone whose opinion you don't like.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

This same ass has a SS# which he gives to get a car, medical care, maybe a house or rental agreement, order his porno, his bank accounts, and so on...

My point is that he is just another jackass arguing a point of view in which he doesn't adhere to. How many times has he shared his data and not known where or how it is used but doesn't give a shit because he is a greedy lazy ass who wnats the instant reward of what he is looking for.

Listen up dick. If you are going to preach then make sure you live by the ethic your preaching to us. Since we know for damn sure your not then shut up, ass.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[bfree]

On downloading applications, you should be careful no matter what you are doing. No matter where you get software from, you either have to check it or trust the person you got it from. If you want to check it, you can either google it and hope that someone has done the alternative and posted about it OR you can examine the softwares actual instructions. If nobody but the producers has the source to a program, examing the software will be far more painful and difficult. Taking personal finance software as an example, without the source you would have to monitor all data stored on the hard disk by the program (including registry entries) and monitor all communications to find any which you can't explain and confirm aren't carrying an extra payload. If either of these tests throws up something you can't understand you have to go through some serious pain if you don't have the source code, but with the source code you just track down those pieces and then you can understand them. The final step of ensuring software is going to behave as you expect with no hidden treasures is to check the entire source and confirm that your own compilation matches the binary being distributed (assuming the whole point of this is to check that random downloaders aren't being taken). Your also of course going to have to ensure that your compiler is unaffected. If you have the entire source code to your distro and the apllication then far more people are likely to check some software integrity. If a program is actively devloped by a community with publically readable source code, a lazy person who is unwilling to do anything to confirm their software's integrity (99%+ I expect) is a lot safer with it then with a binary produced by a closed group. For a person who is willing to search to check if their software is ok, then again the publically revieable software is far more likely to yield a trustworthy result.

As for waiting for free beer, I personally would have no problem paying for GPL software. If a company sold some software under the GPL and requested that nobody redistributed it and that was respected generally, I wouldn't be the one to post it! If it is under the GPL though, I couldn't be stopped!

Finally on the shopping carts, the difference is that unless a dodgy shopping cart vendor's software runs a number of sites I visit they will not get very much information (but I wouldn't shop from companies who I would feel would not care about protecting their customer information).

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[g4dget]

Translation: I don't want to pay anyone for their hard work in putting together any piece of cross platform software.

I don't think that is what he was saying. But even if it was, the economic system in which you get paid for you hard work is called "communism". In a market economy, your "hard work" is worth only as much as people are willing to pay for it, in this case $0.

And given that there are plenty of free, web-based financial management offerings from banks, I suspect that this is what many people feel this package is worth.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[g4dget]

All software shall not and should not be free. Remember, a well-known government tried to use that model for all things, and it failed.

You are so confused. Things in the Soviet Union (which I assume you are referring to) were decidedly not free. Furthermore, just charging money for stuff doesn't create a market economy. If anything, Microsoft's dominance of the desktop software market is much closer to a centrally planned economy than a free market economy. Furthermore, a competitive market economy often ends up causing things to be free.

I very much wish we would get a market economy in software, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[HydeMan]

My comments were based on the example of the Moneydance product being bad because it does not subscribe to the free/open source ideas. Sighting Microsoft is a red herring. That is one exception in a huge list of successes in the software market. Also, the open source/free software movement is very communal. People contribute their efforts for the collective benefit of the group. My comment relating free software to communism was related to this characteristic. The free/open source movement does have its own benefits, with the users of the technology being intimately involved in the development. However, the profit incentive of the free market (commercial software) is so important in developing innovative products that I would put the free market (commercial) up against the free software community any day of the week. Without that incentive, innovation would suffer.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[g4dget]

Also, the open source/free software movement is very communal. People contribute their efforts for the collective benefit of the group. My comment relating free software to communism was related to this characteristic.

Your comment was equating communism and getting things for free, which is just wrong.

And your new argument is just as bogus. Cooperation ("collective benefit of the group") is an integral part of free market economies. Evidently, when it comes to software, cooperation is a successful free market strategy, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it. Furthermore, free software involves its own internal free market economy, it is just that the costs and benefits are not exchanged in terms of money.

If you are concerned about Soviet-style failures and inefficiencies, be concerned about Microsoft: there you have a huge, centrally planned economy par excellence, an entity existing largely outside competitive pressures. Even the fact that Microsoft employees are getting rich isn't exactly out of character, if you look at the relative luxury Soviet party bosses enjoyed. The current state of the software industry is anything but a poster child for free market economies.

However, the profit incentive of the free market (commercial software) is so important in developing innovative products that I would put the free market (commercial) up against the free software community any day of the week. Without that incentive, innovation would suffer.

Let's look at where some big open source software actually came from. X was one of the first window systems, the first network transparent window system, and it was open source from the start, long before Microsoft came out with its clone of Apple's clone of Xerox's GUI. The web browser and web servers--academic developments without profit motive: Apache is based on the original CERN server, and Mozilla traces its roots back to XMosaic, which was in turn based on the NeXTStep browser. The networking code in BSD, Macintosh, commercial UNIX, and Windows--derived from open source, academic BSD code. Open source speech recognition and speech synthesis--derived from academic research projects at CMU, Edinburgh, and Cambridge. We could go on and on.

And, of course, Microsoft, the most profitable software company of all times, has never innovated in any significant way: all their major products are based on other people's inventions, sometimes purchased, and more often simply copied.

Basically, you are just mindlessly repeating political catch phrases. Study some history for a change--both of the world kind and of the free software kind.

SAy Bye-Bye MOney

[FAngel]

Buy Bye M$ Money

Why not use Gnucash?

[Gothmolly]

See subject.

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[AngryPuppy]

Bill payment and downloading transactions from my bank... I can't get to their site right now, but I understand from the original post that this is the first Linux based financial app that will let you do the two activities I listed.

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it work on OS/X and or Windows? Since I work for a comapany that has a windows product and since my wife likes to play zoo tycoon. I have to have a windows box at home. Cross platform is a good thing sometimes.

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[Lxy]

Simple... use Quicken to its fullest extent, then try using Gnucash. You'll see pretty quickly.

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[slide-rule]

Probably "ease of use". I have yet to see this new-fangled thing yet. In the meantime, I've been very slowly brewing up something I can use myself (no, it isn't far enough along to matter to anyone else yet; yes, it'd be GPL'ed or something else "open" if it does get there). I've looked at gnucash each time the next even-number comes out. It looks nice if you need to do small-business stuff, but for just my personal finances, I could never get far enough along after hours of banging my head against it to get anything set up and useable. So... if the new app looks like it'll be as easy and intuitive (to me) to use, I might give it a shot. That's what I would reply to your question with. (On the matter of rolling my own, gnucash doesn't have things I'd call simple and necessary yet for personal finance tracking that, having used in MS Money, are quite simply deal-breakers for me to not have available.)

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[Chilltowner]

That's a shame. It can take a little while to get used to double-entry bookkeeping, but once you grok it, GnuCash really makes things sing. I've used GnuCash since 1.4.x, and it's still the best thing I've tried (including Quicken). You can get away with just using the checkbook type register to do simple finances. Really, the beauty of GnuCash is that it allows itself to be as simple or as complicated as you need it. I started using it for simple finances, and now I also run my consulting business on it. It's been great for both.

You can download transactions to it, too, in reply to one of the parent posts. Bill paying isn't in yet, but things seem to be moving along pretty well in that direction. Plus, the users mailing list is really active and helpful, so there's no need to bang heads.

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[slide-rule]

If there's a walk-through or tutorial guide on setting up gnucash for [preferrably simple-style] personal finances, please post. I've looked for something several times and haven't found any useful references. The recent 1.8 looks fairly close to my needs, but I simply don't have brainpower to invest in figuring out a workable setup on my own. (Yes, the irony of that statement vs. my running two dual boot linux boxes isn't lost on me...where you think my time goes? ;-) Something like a "MS Money user's survival guide to gnucash" (or the like for quicken users) would probably go a long way to help gain some adoption.

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[schussat]

If there's a walk-through or tutorial guide on setting up gnucash for [preferrably simple-style] personal finances, please post.

I second that request, and would mod it up if I could. I have poked around in the gnucash documentation, and I'm a current user of it, but I would love to see some good user-directed documentation aimed at giving users lots of practical information.

-Alan

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-guide/

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnucash supports HBCI (home banking computer interface) which is widely used by German banks.
The first user version with this was 1.8.0, released
February 3rd this year.
So this just because some slashdot post repeats silly marketing claims without quotes doesn't mean it's true.

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[AngryPuppy]

Maybe my bank isn't German. (And it isn't).

Actually, I also got another response (below the horizon due to bad karma) saying that the latest CVS version will let me connect to my account. I haven't fully researched it yet (obviously) but it sounds like the stable version of Gnucash won't let me connect to my account yet, although the CVS sounds tempting.

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[Chilltowner]

The link posted by the AC is very good. There's also a PDF which is a pretty concise walk through the basic features (pre-1.8, but still very useful).

Also, when you start GnuCash for the first time, there's a "Druid" that will walk you through and help you get your accounts downloaded and set up.

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[RobotRunAmok]

Ohhh, because it's dreadful! There's no comparison!!

Outlook and MS Money had been the only programs that made me boot up into my Windows partition, and I finally kicked Outlook recently through sheer force of will and fusing my PDA to my fingers. (Evolution, like GNUcash, _looks_ like its MS counterpart, but the resemblance ends at surface level.)

If this puppy can help me kick out of MS Money, I'm a real happy camper.

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[Dimwit]

Hey! It's not GNUCash, it's GNU/GNUCash!

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[m1a1]

If there's a walk-through or tutorial guide on setting up gnucash for [preferrably simple-style] personal finances, please post.

open your terminal emulator and:

emerge gnucash
gnucash

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[PyromanFO]

And now Ive got a beginners guide to posting like m1a1

emerge smartass
smartass --post slashdot.org

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[EricHsu]

Gnucash is great. I converted my old ratty Quicken files to Gnucash (via .qif) and it worked mostly fine. There were some cases where Quicken let me (accidentally) specify a deposit into an account that was categorized as living in that same account (as opposed to coming from Accounts Payable or something), and Gnucash treated those fields literally. After hunting those glitches down, it was smooth sailing.

The only caveat: Gnucash isn't really exporting right now, so don't expect to get your data out for another version or two.

- Eric

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[krogoth]

(time to kill my server)

I'm working on my own personal finance program; I created it because nothing had decent budgeting, but I'm open to suggestions for other features (it already has a few other basic personal finance features).

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[slide-rule]

More to reply than to be modded or anything, but my own very personal list of needed features involve:

* Cross platform client. Have two systems that dual boot, and Mac is really getting tempting as a replacement for one of the '98 partitions. I certainly don't want to tie down to a particular desktop environment under any OS choice. Given this, my slowly growing prototype MS Money replacement is Java (as appears is money dance?)
* decentralized data storage. (MySQL server or some such.) not necessarily multi-concurrent or anything, just that any box in any OS mode can see/modify finance data.
* Keeping the data format "open" in sense of being human-readable in its raw form isn't strictly required, but is desirable (and chucking data to a central database seems to address this also). backup/restore capability, etc.
* bill schedules coupled with balance forcasting into an arbitrary time period. (This is the most invaluable tool I've adapted to in MS Money. lack of a forecast graph is a deal-breaker... to me.)
* enter / display / modify transactions like like a check layout. (some programs only 'display' in a tabular format unless you 'edit' or something.)
* Balancing against a (paper) statement has to be as easy as, say, checking my e-mail.
* Common reports and graphs (line, bar, pie, etc.) but also more 'expert mode' queries into the database and/or a very flexible way to make complex queries.
* checking, savings, credit card, 401k contributions, investments.

Again, this is just a personal list based on my current use case(s) with MS Money. Online stuff isn't personally needed since my bank has a web interface to view stuff, but no way as yet to download statements that I've found (and really, by hand isn't that hard).

Re:Why not use Gnucash?

[slide-rule]

open your terminal emulator and:

emerge gnucash
gnucash

Wow.... that's a useful and non-inflammatory piece of information there, eh? Maybe I could boot over to '98, drop in a CD and go clickety on all the "Next" buttons. Why do all the gentoo posters here on slashdot seem to think their little "emerge" installer solves all the problems in the world, many of which aren't associated with installation?

FINALLY!

[reiggin]

something for Mac OS X that gives Quicken/Intuit a slap in the face. I'll buy it.

Re:FINALLY!

[Daniel_Staal]

Does it have Palm (third party app fine, just make sure I can enter transactions on the Palm.) support? If so, I am totally in agreement.

If not, what would it take to add Palm support?

Re:FINALLY!

[DavidLeblond]

Actually, having used Quicken for a few years I learned that Quicken gave Quicken a slap in the face. It has to be the slowest program I've ever used. I use MS Money now, it would be interesting to see how this new program performs.

Re:FINALLY!

[sreilly]

For a Palm-sync extension to Moneydance, check this page out:
http://64.83.23.228/preview/

That would be http://moneydance.com/preview/, but I had to take defensive measures when the story was posted.

The Moneydance PalmSync extension works with several PalmOS finance applications like SplashMoney, Expense, etc. However, it may not work with more recent versions of Palm Desktop for Windows.

Re:FINALLY!

[Daniel_Staal]

How about Mac? (Would check the page, but it is still trying to load...)

I use PocketQuicken on Palm, but am not hooked to it if there is a better choice.

Re:FINALLY!

[sreilly]

Yes, it should work on the Mac too. It was built and tested primarily on OS X.

I review

[mpost4]

It looks like a good program. The don't seam to have paytrust up yet, that is the part for on line payment. It does look allot like Quicken, or at lest an older ver I remember from a few years ago, I am going to have to play with this program more, it is a 20Mb download for the trial ver. I already go my copy before they got /., best $5 I ever spent (I can see "The Mysterious Future") But it is a java based program that is how they did the cross platform stuff, they do not have linux executable. But hay it is a good program and I will play with it some more and see if I would like to get a real copy of it.

Re:I review

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* SHILL *cough*

how much more expensive is it to do a slashvertisement than a banner ad?

Re:I review

[mpost4]

I am not sure about what you mean by this, but I have 2 ideas so I respond to both of them

1) I don't work for slashdot, I just said I am happy I have the sub

2) I did not get it to avoid the ads -- I got it for the other benifits it gives. Like the see soon to come storys, the ability to have more friends and foes, able to look at more then the last 24 post of some one, I can go all the way back to their first post. That is why I got it.

Worried?

[Musashi Miyamoto]

I don't know why, but for some reason I feel uneasy about having an open-source finance program. Especially one that accesses my account information across the Internet.

I know that I shouldn't feel that way, but I don't like the idea of easy access to the code. I know "security through obscurity" isn't security, but "security through obscurity and good coding" is probably better than "security though good coding" alone.

Thoughts?

Re:Worried?

[Mortice]

Thoughts?

I think that since it's not open source, you just wasted your time.

Re:Worried?

[gmhowell]

Yeah, first thought is that you are a troll. But, ignoring that, according to some comments, it isn't OSS or Free. But I can forgive you for that, since the fucking page is slashdotted, even though the guy who runs the page submitted the article. Geniuses.

(Seriously though, you probably aren't a troll. Obscurity is just one more level of security.)

Re:Worried?

[Musashi Miyamoto]

No, it wasn't meant to be a troll post.

However, my other thought on the obscurity is that it prevents public review of the code and design. It limits the debugging to the group of programmers that created the software. The question then turns to: What is more effective at security, group review or obscurity?

My thought is obscurity. There have been several security holes found in open source software many months or years after entering the code.

Re:Worried?

[Diphthong]

I know "security through obscurity" isn't security, but "security through obscurity and good coding" is probably better than "security though good coding" alone.

Well, sort of... but obscurity does not generally lend itself to good coding. (That argument is a very slippery off-topic slope so I'll stop now.)

When it comes to a financial app, whether it goes on the 'net or not, I very much do not want obscurity -- otherwise I might end up installing something that both does my taxes and mucks with reserved sectors of my hard drive.

Re:Worried?

[Musashi Miyamoto]

I would tend to agree with that comment. Obscurity, especially in smaller projects, tends to lend itself to really sloppy atrocious code.

Re:Worried?

[Mortice]

There have been several security holes found in open source software many months or years after entering the code.

I think the key point here is that they have been found, and fixed. Think back to how you heard about those holes. Was the announcement accompanied by a patch or a workaround?

Then ask yourself about the number of holes found and exploited in closed source software projects, and the length of time before their teams got a patch out.

One of the main benefits of open source software is that, in the words of ESR, bugs become transparent with enough pairs of eyes looking at them. If security is a major concern for an OSS project's users, it's likely to get good quickly.

Re:Worried?

[Harik]

There is no such thing as "security through obscurity and good coding". Closed-source programs that cannot be audited have a horrible track record of buffer overflows, unintended consequences to out-of-spec inputs, etc. So the only "security" is the fact that it's obscure. Personally, I'd trust open-source code more.

As for accessing over the internet, one can only hope they're using standard protocols like SSL to encrypt the data and certs to know you're talking to a bank and not a man-in-the-middle.

--Dan

Re:Worried?

[mark-t]

There is no such thing as "security through obscurity and good coding".

Actually, they aren't so much mutually exclusive as much as security through good coding makes security through obscurity superfluous.

What is important in this, however, is that the relationship is not symmetric. Security through obscurity does *NOT make security through good coding superfluous -- in fact, just the opposite is generally true.

Re:Worried?

[ichimunki]

I don't think it would be good for bugs to become transparent. Wouldn't that make them a lot harder to find?

Re:Worried?

[Anonymous Coward]

you have a point.

that whole "security through obscurity" quote always pissed me off...and i think it's bullshit.

obscurity works pretty damn well as PART of a whole system.

or why don't one of you guys that is all hip on these *neat* sounding phrases (i.e. security through obscurity") go over to iraq and tell the soldiers to exchange their camo gear for florescent orange.

i hope they promptly shoot you.

Re:Worried?

[Mortice]

The word 'transparent' there means 'easy to solve'.

Re:Worried?

[schon]

obscurity works pretty damn well as PART of a whole system.

No, it most certainly doesn't. Not at all.

In fact, it actually makes whatever security you *do* have less useful, by making you believe that you're doing something that's aiding you.

go over to iraq and tell the soldiers to exchange their camo gear for florescent orange.

What, exactly, does that have to do with obscurity?

Being conspicuous, and hiding information are two very different things..

But I suspect you're just trolling anyway.

Re:Worried?

[Stauf]

This only works if you can garuntee that the code that is obscure is also good. The only way that you can prove this is if the code that is good is not obscure (and hence, can be read and judged 'good').

If there was some mechanism in place to ensure beyond a shadow of a doubt that the code is good and also allows it to stay obscure, then yes, "security through obscurity and good coding" is probably better than "security though good coding" alone, but such a mechanism is well nigh impossible to achieve.

Re:Worried?

[ichimunki]

Actually it means "easy to detect" or "readily apparent" (both in the dictionary definition of "transparent"). They still might be difficult to solve even once they are found.

And from the Open Source corner...

[CWCarlson]

I direct your attention to GnuCash.

I've never used it, but it certainly seems like a worthy contender.

Re:And from the Open Source corner...

[petabyte]

I'm currently looking into using GNUcash and so far its pretty impressive. I used to work for a company maintaining data in Quickbooks and eventually in MS Money. GNUCash is very capable against both of these programs for your average home user. Their webpage does list the goal of adding business features in the future.

What I think GNUCash is missing most of all, however, is cross platform compatblity. I know it handles QIF files but the program itself has not been ported to Windows or MacOS yet. Many people these days have multiple OSes and I don't want have to reboot my machine in order to balance my checkbook (this arguement applies to both MS Money and Quicken as well).

GNUCash has alot of potential and I might just start using it with the hope that cross-compatablity comes later. :)

Re:And from the Open Source corner...

[jsled]

It has been ported to OSX, and is distributed as part of fink, IIRC.

Yup; recent, but there: http://fink.sourceforge.net/pdb/package.php/gnucas h

Re:And from the Open Source corner...

[Anonymous Coward]

and I don't want have to reboot my machine in order to balance my checkbook (this arguement applies to both MS Money and Quicken as well.

I balance my check book using gnucash all the time without rebooting.

Now if only companies who sell software for high prices would think it is important that I wouldn't have to reboot to use their Windows-only products or rebalance my checkbook every time I want to upgrade or use it on a new machine.

Re:And from the Open Source corner...

[pmz]

I've never used it, but it certainly seems like a worthy contender.

Using GnuCash is just fine. It works well and is robust in my experience so far.

However, compiling it from source is the single most painful experience I have ever had with open source sofware without exception.

Re:And from the Open Source corner...

[John Hurliman]

I think you meant Quicken. GnuCash was not intended to be, and never will be, a competitor for QuickBooks. While personal finances are great, there is nothing in Linux that can even come close to business accounting software like QuickBooks.

Re:And from the Open Source corner...

[Anonymous Coward]

Never rebooted my machine to use or during the use of either Quicken, Quickbooks or MS Money in over 6 years now. But thank-you for playing the FUD game, try harder next time, you might win a prize.

Re:And from the Open Source corner...

[yAm]

Truly. Building KDE or XFree pales in comparison.

And, Oi!, the dependencies!

Just pray it's included with your distro. I've _never_ gotten it to work from packages...

Re:And from the Open Source corner...

[jvkjvk]

Last time I tried GNUCash (1.6.8 stable), it could not handle importing my quicken accounts correctly.

Simply could not do it. I was told that it was because of the lack of data that Quicken put into their export files.

However, since then, I upgraded Quicken, and they seem to save a buttload more stuff into their files (MUCH bigger!).

I suppose it might be time to try again, with 1.8.2 out.

Re:And from the Open Source corner...

[Khazunga]

All praise Portage. I'm just building it from source:
emerge gnucash

Painless! :-)

money money money

[stratjakt]

Does your average linux user actually have any finances to manage?

-1: Troll

Re:money money money

[ChaoticChaos]

ROFL!!!!!!!

+5: Insightful

Re:money money money

[Anonymous Coward]

A program that managed the crumbs in their dirty beards would be more useful.

Re:money money money

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that's funny...

Re:money money money

[dacarr]

• Does your average linux user actually have any finances to manage?

Considering I'm supporting my family and using Linux (semi-unrelated), yes. This might be a good thing. Now if I can only get past the fact that the page has been slashdotted and NOT MIRRORED.....

Re:money money money

[guacamolefoo]

A program that managed the crumbs in their dirty beards would be more useful.

I think Mozilla does this. FWIW, they aren't crumbs, they are called "cookies". Duh.

GF.

Re:money money money

[WebMasterJoe]

Does your average linux user actually have any finances to manage?

Since the average linux user has no girlfriend, yes, he does still have some money.

Re:money money money

[MeNeXT]

Probably more than a ligitimate Windows user since thet did not have to pay the tax.

Re:money money money

[Anonymous Coward]

No, obviously the Windows user has a job since he could afford it. Only jobless basement dwellers use Linux and you know it!

Re:money money money

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see by your advanced use of the lingo, that you are an AOL user.

ROFL is fucking gay. Stop saying that shit, you moron.

Re:money money money

[JourneymanMereel]

/me loads Quicken, sees lots of red numbers

Guess that means the answer for me is 'no'

Re:money money money

[JourneymanMereel]

hmmm... wonder what my excuse is... I don't have a girlfriend or money :(

I'm clinging to "poor college student" which gives me hope that someday it will get better.

Re:money money money

[WebMasterJoe]

The standard non-geek spends money on items that increase one's chance of getting a girlfriend, such as soap.

Geeks, on the other hand, forego soap and instead buy GeForce video cards and glowing PC cases, which actually decrease one's chance of getting a girlfriend.

Re:money money money

[JourneymanMereel]

You mean bring a laptop (running linux, of course) to social events isn't a turn-on?
</sarcasm>

Re:money money money

[Creepy]

interesting...

most Linux geeks I know are married (including myself). Working a UNIX heavy tech job probably draws more of that sort...

I have to manage my wife's money - she's to money what a heatsink is to heat. Now if she'd only stop overheating (er, bouncing checks)...

Re:money money money

[Daniel_Staal]

Since the average linux user has no girlfriend, yes, he does still have some money.

An all-consuming computer fetish is not cheaper than a girlfriend.

At least, not in my experiance.

Re:money money money

[Xerithane]

I have to manage my wife's money - she's to money what a heatsink is to heat. Now if she'd only stop overheating

Exact opposite with me. I can generate a lot of money, and dissipate it with amazing efficiency. I'm thinking at a nice 107% efficiency rate, or such.

I have to ask for approvals for anything over the cost of a cheap lunch.

Re:money money money

[gmby]

Nah... still no money; with two and a half ki.. ummm computers and a BleedingEdge Toy.. ummm Development machine. There's no money left to go out and meet any girls.

Re:money money money

[fitten]

Heh, no kidding. I could buy at least a dozen roses per week all year-round for what I spend in computer parts each year.

Re:money money money

[Anonymous Coward]

And what do YOU say, smart guy? You won't respond, so I'll help:

"Oh my, that is frightfully funny indeed. Yes, quite droll."

Re:money money money

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU LOSE. I did respond. And what I'd say is shut your pie hole.

Impressive

[gmhowell]

Slashdotted with 2 comments. Look, if you are promoting your own project, there is no excuse for a slashdotting. Be prepared next time you submit your PR piece.

So, since the homepage refused my connection:

Can I install the client on multiple machines without an additional license? Does it work with Bank of America seemlessly (ie, I don't have to futz about with dl'ing the transactions manually). Can I import Quicken 2003 data? How much does it cost? What libraries did you use for the cross platform work?

Re:Impressive

[sreilly]

lashdotted with 2 comments. Look, if you are promoting your own project, there is no excuse for a slashdotting. Be prepared next time you submit your PR piece.

Unfortunately, the FreeBSD box it is hosted on keeps rebooting.

Can I install the client on multiple machines without an additional license? Does it work with Bank of America seemlessly (ie, I don't have to futz about with dl'ing the transactions manually). Can I import Quicken 2003 data? How much does it cost? What libraries did you use for the cross platform work?

multiple machines, one license: yes

bank of america: yes

import q2003 data: yes

cost: 29.99

libraries: java - jsse, jce, etc

Re:Impressive

[sshack]

You had me right up until the java part. I would have taken out my cc and bought a copy of moneydance then and there. Too bad :-( Hope the next product can be cross platform without java. wxwindows works wonders for that (i'd know, I develop with it).

Re:Impressive

[Doktor Memory]

Wait, let me see if I'm reading you correctly here. You won't buy a working application just because it's written in java/swing/awt?

That's just weird, man.

Re:Impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

Not weird, the app will take 280 megs of ram after running for 10 minutes and launching eny other app while it's running will lock up your machine. Running a Java program itself it like taking a time warp back to owning a p90. Every Java program I have ever run does that, even ones a lot smaller than a completely "money" app.

So yes, it being Java is a huge detriment right out of the gate.

Re:Impressive

[mrmeval]

Good, rational, calm, response. For 30 bux you sir have deal as soon as your poor little devil of a freebsd is working. As long as I can bulk enter a couple of hundred transactions with out getting yelled to save each and every one (gnu-cash). Oddly enough the other stuff is just icing. J.

Re:Impressive

[sreilly]

So yes, it being Java is a huge detriment right out of the gate.

I agree that many swing apps are bloated memory-wise, but please give moneydance a try. You may be surprised. It was developed to be relatively lean and doesn't use all of the high-memory-usage features of swing.

Re:Impressive

[Doktor Memory]

Not weird, the app will take 280 megs of ram after running for 10 minutes and launching eny other app while it's running will lock up your machine.

Er, when was the last time you ever used a java client application?

I'm not going to apologize for the bloat and slowness of the original versions of java (1.0-1.2 inclusive): Sun fucked up, and MS cleaned their clock in the market as a result. Spilt milk, no use in crying over it.

I use java client apps (mostly limewire) almost every day on my 2-year-old linux box (not exactly a speed demon by today's standards), and I have never seen the problems you describe. If you are seeing that kind of slowdown just on application launch, you should be complaining loud and hard to your vendor, because something is seriously fucked up.

Re:Impressive

[JourneymanMereel]

Does it to graphing/categorization similar to Quicken? Even though it's disappointing to see all those graphs that show my networth to be somewhere below the line of 0, it's something I've come to like.

Also, does it work with Discover Card and/or Citibank?

Does it have a Palm/Pocket PC/Handheld Linux component?

Last but not least, does it syncronize with any kind of webbased application?

Re:Impressive

[sreilly]

Hello,

Graphing/categorization: yes, definitely. Let me know if there are any graphs that it doesn't have that you would like to see.

Discover Card/Citibank: It definitely works with Discover Card, and I'm pretty sure Citibank is in there too. Once the load on the web site subsides please download a copy and try it out!

PalmSync: There is a beta version available here:
http://moneydance.com/preview/

As for web based applications, not yet, but I plan on providing an extension that will do this. Hopefully in the next few months.

Re:Impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to comment on your utter disdain for Java? Yes, older version of Jave Swing GUIs were slow, but that is not so much a problem any more. Jave is a wonderful technology.

Re:Impressive

[gmhowell]

Hopefully, I can check out the page by now. Thanks for the info.

Re:Impressive

[Rinikusu]

There's just no pleasing some people.
"I want it free!"
"I want the source!"
"I want you to do all the work and give it to me!"

me me me me me me me. For a bunch of so-called "community supporters", they're surprisingly self-centered and self-important. Maybe the guy should go write his own software and do whatever the hell he wants to with it.

"I want Quake for Linux!"
"Okay, here it is."
"But.. it's $50! I want it for free!"
"Uhmm..." :: sigh ::

Re:Impressive

[3.1415926535]

As long as I can bulk enter a couple of hundred transactions with out getting yelled to save each and every one (gnu-cash).

You know, since it's open source, that sounds like it'd be pretty trivial to remove.

GREAT!

[tabo_peru]

Now I only need money.

Re:GREAT!

[Scaba]

No, my friend, all you need is love.

Re:GREAT!

[Anonymous Coward]

don't be gay, scaba

Re:GREAT!

[yokem_55]

$ make love
make: *** No rule to make target `love'. Stop.

Damn!

Re:GREAT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously our friend must have love : he has no money

Re:GREAT!

[jlrowe]

Trust me, money [the love of] is cheaper than love [of the other sex]

Re:GREAT!

[jtdubs]

I'm reminded of a fabulous Einstein quotation:

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about."

Justin Dubs

Re:GREAT!

[Our Man In Redmond]

$ make money
make: *** No rule to make target 'money'. Stop.

Geez, you just can't win.

Not for me

[guacamolefoo]

Until there is a personal finance program that allows me to calculate my savings in large stone wheels, I just don't have a use for it.

GF.

Re:Not for me

[jsled]

GnuCash can, actually. You can define arbritary commodities and currencies... keep the exchange rate up to date, &c.

USD, CND, EUR ... LSW? ;)

Re:Not for me

[lysander]

I prefer to keep my meager savings in ceramic pots and grass.

Re:Not for me

[sreilly]

Step One: download moneydance (assuming you can get through)

Step Two: Install it. It is so very easy to install.

Step Three: Run it.

Step Four: Select the Tools->Currencies menu

Step Five: Click "New Currency"

Moneydance can manage any kind of currency you can invent. Or at least any currency that can be represented as a fixed-point-decimal. :)

Re:Not for me

[NotAnAol]

YAP - Yet Another Paradise (with stone wheels for currency) :-)

Dancing Money?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am more fond of women who dance for money than money that dances. But, mabey that's just me.

Re:Dancing Money?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I saw money dance, it involved acid.

Good news

[jimand]

I'll be checking this out since my version of Quicken (2000 Deluxe) just "sunsetted" the banking download feature. I'd love to find a replacement (yes, I'm looking at Gnucash too) so I don't have to either enter all my x-actions by hand or pay those money-grubbing weasels at Intuit for a subscription.

Re:Good news

[Anonymous Coward]

my version of Quicken (2000 Deluxe) just "sunsetted" the banking download feature

I don't get this. Every bank I deal with (in Canada), you go to their web page, log in, download an OFX or QIF file, and then have Money or Quicken import it. Does Quicken somehow disable their import feature after a certain date?

Re:Good news

[jtone]

I don't think it's Quicken - I think it's the banks. I bank at a local credit union and at TD. TD's been warning me that they're going to cut off Quicken 2001 downloads in April and the CU site hasn't said anything. So I'm pretty sure it's the bank's decision.

Re:Good news

[jimand]

Jtone, I'm pretty sure it's Quicken. I use CIBC and their download screen only allows you to select Quicken. I can download the file OK but when I try to import to Quicken I get an error "Quicken is unable to verify the financial institution information for this download." I think there's a embedded value within Quicken that points it to a "verification server" at Intuit.

You'd think that spme of these guys would mirror..

[attemptedgoalie]

Perhaps when posting something to /. they company could be ready for the slashdot effect.

And since many cannot withstand the hit, they could be proactive and have a couple of mirrors.

Argh, I guess I'll know what moneydance2003 did in 2004.

Profit!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now maybe I can finally figure out what step two is...

1. Idea
2. ???
3. Profit!

Intuit

[0x7F]

For those of us who dislike Intuit's DRM, this sounds like a great alternative to one of their products. The fact that it runs on GNU/Linux is a nice bonus, too.

I hope they follow up with some nice tax software, so they can really hit Intuit where it counts.

Re:Intuit

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that it runs on GNU/Linux is a nice bonus, too.

And not only that, but it runs on regular old Linux as well.

Re:Intuit

[jpt.d]

I would have prefered it run on BSD/Linux

Re:Intuit

[Anonymous Coward]

That's good to know. I don't use GNU software.

Re:Intuit

[Anonymous Coward]

Well since Linux is just the kernel, you need the GNU part. The original poster was just being PC.

Re:Intuit

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily! Using a GUI for editing and file mangement and not compiling your own apps? No need for anything GNU whatsoever! Sure, GNU was used in making your distro, but the USER doesn't necessarily need it.

Re:Intuit

[ae]

You'd be using glibc for sure.

Re:Intuit

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just GNU/Linux, mind you. It also runs on Linux.

MoneyDance

[unsinged int]

I've tried it before. People just looked at me funny and I didn't get any money. Same thing with the rain dance. Must be doing something wrong...

Re:MoneyDance

[Scaba]

I've tried it before. People just looked at me funny and I didn't get any money. Same thing with the rain dance. Must be doing something wrong...

Maybe you need to talk to the Dance Man?

Re:MoneyDance

[tmark]

I've tried it before. People just looked at me funny and I didn't get any money...Must be doing something wrong...

Maybe you're not getting much money because your breasts are one or 3 cup sizes too small ?

Re:MoneyDance

[Anonymous Coward]

Then maybe *you'll* be safe when doing the hamster dance.

I'm scarred for life.

Re:MoneyDance

[infinite9]

Must be doing something wrong..

This reminds me of my favorite far side. There were a bunch of indians standing around looking at one in the middle. The indian in the middle was holding a book titled "101 Rain Dances". Instead of rain drops, it was raining hand-crank egg beaters. The caption said, "Oh, one step to the left, then two to the right. What kind of dance was I doing?"

Re:MoneyDance

[ENOENT]

Or maybe they are 4 to 5 cup sizes too large and you're male...

Re:MoneyDance

[Samus]

This is slashdot. His breasts are probably big enough its just the gut they flop on that turns people off.

Re:Moneydance

[sjuranic]

I guess this is sort of a "me too" post, but I used Moneydance WAAAAY back in the day (c. 1998) and found it to be generally useful.

Of course I ditched it in a heartbeat after I found out about GNUcash (even though GNUcash couldn't do much at the time), since I could ditch the Java app for an app written in C.

My $0.02.

Re:You'd think that SOME of these guys would...

[attemptedgoalie]

Stupid illiteracy. That should have been some in the title.

How new is this version?

[Evangelion]

I tried the current moneydance out a few weeks ago, and it simply Didn't Work. After entering a few transactions, modifying one of them caused it to hang, and eventually crap out with the good 'ol NullPointerException.

If it's improved in the last few weeks, I might give it another shot, but only because GNUCash doesn't run on Windows.

Re:How new is this version?

[fucksl4shd0t]

If it's improved in the last few weeks, I might give it another shot, but only because GNUCash doesn't run on Windows.

Has anybody tried compiling GNUCash under cygwin? I know there are some GTK programs that have been compiled under cygwin (rather than using the GTK port to windows). I don't recall what dependencies GNUCash has, I just remember there's a LOT (I failed to build 1.6, but luckily Mandrake is including 1.6+ versions now).

Also, does anybody know about decent documentation for GNUCash? My main requirement for financial app is that it use a database server like Postgres, rather than it's own stupid file format. That way I can write custom reports with the report writer of my choice. I hear GNUCash does this, but haven't seen it. What about Moneydance? Will it let me use a real database or its cheesy implementation of one?

Re:How new is this version?

[Evangelion]

Has anybody tried compiling GNUCash under cygwin?

I checked around for that -- there have been various attempts, but I don't know of anyone who as succeded with it. The other option I was looking into was running it remotely on a seperate Linux box using cygwin's xserver, but I need to set it up, and I'm not sure it's worth the electricity for one application.

Regarding your other question, the documentation is at gnucash.org...

"Currently implemented and supported are the XML file backend, which stores GnuCash data in its native XML file format, and the Postgres SQL backend, which supports multiple simultaneous users of GnuCash."

Re:How new is this version?

[molarmass192]

Offtopic but isn't it ironic how the NullPointerException has become the segfault of Java. Yeah you can't send pointers off into deep space but NullPointerException really is just a fancy wrapper for what would otherwise be a segfault. Ok, so it lets you do a little cleanup and possibly recover ... still food for thought.

Re:How new is this version?

[fucksl4shd0t]

The other option I was looking into was running it remotely on a seperate Linux box using cygwin's xserver, but I need to set it up, and I'm not sure it's worth the electricity for one application.

Heh, I'm doing this already for Quicken, but I'm reading through GNUCash documentation right now. It really does look like it'll do what I want, and I'm willing to sacrifice online banking if necessary fianlly. I don't think my wife will object, since it's costing $6/month, and she's wanted to eliminate that ever since it started (while enjoying the convenience of having online banking: women don't make sense).

But I would *really* like to eliminate the windows computer running in the back completely, and I'm close to doing so. Replacing Quicken is the first step. Getting xmms-alarm to handle mulitple alarms is the second step, and then I should be done. :) (And the computer will still run, it'll just run linux instead)

Re:Worried? (only if I would use it)

[frovingslosh]

but "security through obscurity and good coding" is probably better than "security though good coding" alone.

Thoughts?

Just the opposite. Security through good open code, that can be reviewed by people who understand this and confirm that there is real security is much more secure that "I've written good code, trust me" type code. The bad guys who want your data, you bank accounts and your identity are not going to be stopped from reverse engineering the code by an EULA. If an EULA only stops honest people from checking the validity of the code, then one has to ask "why have it?".

I AGREE WITH THIS POST

[Anonymous Coward]

DIRTY BEARDED GNU HIPPEES

Uhh... wrong

[randombit]

How about Mozilla? I've been doing all of my banking, and paying my credit card bills, over HTTP/SSL for ~2 years now. Which is exceptionally nice as my bank is a local credit union about 3000 miles away from my current place of residence.

If online banking with Linux is causing people problems, I would highly recommend finding a bank that supports doing this kind of thing over the web.

Re:Uhh... wrong

[Daniel_Staal]

Hm? Moneydance is a personal finance manager. One of its features is online banking, but that's not all it does.

Now if you wanted to say you could just use StarOffice's spreadsheet app, then at least you would be on topic...

Re:Uhh... wrong

[dacarr]

I think the idea though is that the client is invariably faster than using a browser. You can't really do keystrokes through a web interface (which is fine for the room-temp IQ crowd), so if you get a specific client that allows the luser to just type this stuff in if they are so inclined, you're at an advantage. That, and you don't have to wait for the program to suck its interface off of a remote server and then parse it into usability every time you click on something.

Re:Uhh... wrong

[peteran]

Managaing transactions you can do by going to the bank, but the thing with this category of software is to keep track of your assets, spending and other information.
I'm not sure about you, but my bank does not offer me the same flexibility.

Re:Uhh... wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey moron- thats like offering a gas can to somebody that needs a ride. Your analogy sucks, and from that I can conclude that you suck too, and by association, so does Mozilla.

Shut up and go home.

Re:Uhh... wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: anger management.

Re:Uhh... wrong

[randombit]

Hm? Moneydance is a personal finance manager. One of its features is online banking, but that's not all it does.

I know, I know! The point I was making is they are talking like this is the first time a Linux user has been able to do online banking, which is quite plainly wrong.

no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I checked this out once. Looked usable, though a little lackluster. I'm sure the newer version has improvements.

However I didn't download it or evaluate it because of an obnoxious license clause that said I waive all rights to a jury trial and agree to arbitrate all claims. Is that clause still there? (Can't tell because apparently they run their web site on a cell phone or something).

Although I don't anticipate being affected by that clause, I find it extremely arrogant that I give up a basic constitutional right just so I can balance my checkbook.

Also, as a poster above mentioned, I'd like to have the source code. This isn't rocket science, this implements basic accounting concepts which are 100s of years old. I have come across several annoying bugs in Quicken in the past and have decided that something as basic and essential as financial software should be delivered as source code. I'd also like to see how values are computed (rounded, fixed-point, etc).

Gnucash for me, thanks.

It depends who you trust.

[djh101010]

If you trust the software developers who wrote this to be good an careful and honest, and their QA department that the software is secure, and that they're not doing anything sneaky, great. Me, I'd prefer the ability to see the source code. Even if I personally am not going to go through every line to see what it's doing, with an open-source product, I know that *someone* has done just that. Further, the nature of open-source is that developers expect others to be looking at their code under a microscope; I feel this adds a sense of responsibility, *and* accountability.

I've been using it for a year...

[loosifer]

...but only on OS X. We bought it because of it's cross-platform capabilities, but never ended up taking advantage of them.

The features are pretty good, in that I don't often want to scream at it and torch the hardware it's running on, like I do most software I use. My wife does most of the finances (whew!), and she seems to like it. I can't compare it to Quicken or whatever, because I haven't used them, but we always import our Quicken-formatted bank statements into MoneyDance with no problems.

Sorry I can't provide a more helpful review, but I just wanted to drop a "Hey, I'm using it, and it's at least decent" note, since no one else appears to have actually used it.

Re:I've been using it for a year...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using it for oh two or three years now on various Windows boxes. I've seen it grow and mature over the years into a very nice package. It may not have every feature that Quicken does, but it works, is stable, and is flexible.

Sean is a great guy. Active on discussion email list and will reply pretty quickly. Many requests that were brought up in that way were implemented real quick.

He did sell the rights to Apgen for a while, but they didn't do anything with it and Sean recently got the rights back to MoneyDance. So this release represents quite a while of Sean thinking of improvements.

I haven't tried this newest version yet, but I will tonight and I suggest you all at least give it a try.

Slashdotted Front Page

[Anonymous Coward]

The world's most intuitive personal finance software just got better!
Moneydance 2003, the groundbreaking new financial tool is now available for all platforms. Moneydance can be trusted to keep all of your financial information safe, organized, and at your fingertips. After just a few minutes with Moneydance's simple interface and powerful features, you will wonder how you ever got along without it.

Protect your privacy - and your peace of mind
With Moneydance, you will not be bombarded with advertisements on your desktop, nor have your personal information shared without your explicit consent. Unlike some other applications, Moneydance does not install third party software on your computer to monitor or restrict your activities.

Online banking and bill payment: no paper? no problem
Pay your bills in seconds without writing a single check. With Moneydance you can automatically synchronize your records with transactions downloaded from your bank. Moneydance currently can perform online banking and bill payment with hundrededs of financial institutions. Moneydance also integrates nicely with the Paytrust online bill payment service.

Manage your budget
Moneydance lets you easily create and manage multiple budgets and shows you where your accounts over or under budget. Simply specify how much you expect to earn or spend in each category for a given time interval (weekly, monthly, yearly). Moneydance can then show you a comparison of how your budget compares to your actual income and expenses for any time period.

Stay on schedule
The ability to schedule recurring or future transactions in Moneydance makes it easy to plan for bills, loan payments, and paychecks. On the starting screen Moneydance shows all of your upcoming or overdue reminders, and you can view future and past reminders for any month. Special loan payment reminders automatically calculate principal and interest payments for mortgages and other loans. You can even print a monthly calendar that includes your scheduled items.

Visualize your wealth
Another great reason to use Moneydance is that it lets you easily visualize your finances. With Moneydance's built-in graphs you can view your accounts from many angles. The Net Worth graph allows you to view the total value of all of your accounts over time. The Expenses graph provides a clear picture of where your money is going and when. Other graphs include Account Balance, Currency History, Income vs Expenses, and more. Moneydance can also remember commonly used graphs so that they are accessible with a single click from the main screen.

Get the details, quickly
Moneydance provides a variety of reports detailing information about your accounts. Built-in reports include: Budget, Missing Checks, Net Worth, Account Balances, Cash Flow, Detailed Cash Flow, Transactions, Cost Basis, and VAT/GST. You can also tell Moneydance to remember commonly used reports so that they are accessible with a single click from the main screen.

International ease
If you ever cross national borders you will appreciate Moneydance's built-in support for multiple currencies. Recording international transfers is a breeze - simply specify the amount and the currency, and Moneydance will automatically calculate the value in the context of the current account. You can download Up-to-date exchange rates from the Internet automatically with the OandA.com exchange rate updater extension.

Compatible, standards-based reliability
Moneydance uses industry standard technologies such as OFX, QIF, SSL/TLS, Java, and XML to ensure compatibility with other software and services. In addition, with our open API and Extension Developer Kit you can be sure that third parties will always be able to integrate their services with Moneydance.

Understand your portfolio
Today's investment portfolios are as complicated as ever. Moneydance can bring your investements into focus with support for tracking stocks, bonds, CDs, mutual funds, and more. The investment account

I used Money Dance

[Nonillion]

But after upgrading to SuSE 8.1 it had been removed from the install media, and the project went ten toes up. I had to switch to GNU Cash instead and I like it better. Money Dance was nice but one cannot tell if they will be here today and gone tomorrow...

Re:Pointless

[dominick]

you are my hero

Moneydance

[Craig Maloney]

I thought I'd weigh in on this discussion since a lot of folks seem to be unfamiliar with the history of this application. MoneyDance dates to a time before when the only other options for Linux were a package written in TCL, and XAccount/GNUCash. At the time $20 bought a license for the application. Having wanted a finance application that worked well, I happily registered my copy and used it for years. The AppGen decided they needed a personal finance component and purchased MoneyDance from the author Sean Reilly. AppGen then had trouble after the dot com boom/bust, and MoneyDance was the first to suffer. People found out the hard way that they had purchased an unsupported product. For the longest time AppGen just sat on the code, letting it rot in secret while people wondered out loud when new fixes and changes would be released. I have since moved to GnuCash for my finances, but I applaud Sean for getting the code and releasing new versions of MoneyDance again. It really is a wonderful program to use, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it for anyone who would like another option in personal finance management.

OK, so I finally got through

[dacarr]

One thing that would be very nice to see is some sort of list of financial institutions that this has been checked with and that compatibility can be assured. At the very least, at least the software compatibilities for the financial institutions' back ends.

Don't forget about Kapital

[martinde]

There is also Kapital from The Kompany. And gnucash, which is linked in other replies. And CrossOver Office, which supports Quicken.

So has anyone had good or bad online banking experience with any of these? I think all of them but gnucash are supposed to support it. I'd like to see a comparative review...

Re:Don't forget about Kapital

[Doc Hopper]

I have a great deal of experience with Quicken under Linux using Codeweavers Wine (the actual Crossover Office product, which I bought largely to run Quicken). It does just fine for the basic checkbook management thing, but there is one huge usability bug that's a show-stopper for me. If you try to enter a "split" (itemize a transaction), and any of the splits have a negative value (like transfer to another account via the split) Quicken crashes hard. Doesn't happen on Windows, but all the time on Linux under CXOffice.

In case you're interested in repeating the experiment, try setting up a house payment with all the correct accounts:
Asset: Escrow
Debt: Home Loan
Cash Flow: Checking

Set up payment from Checking to Home Loan for $900.00 (or whatever your house payment is). Then in House Payment, split that transfer into Principal (positive number), Interest (negative number), and Escrow (negative number). Click OK on Split window, BOOM! Down it goes. I use this technique all the time. Watching the Windows display, I think the Intuit folks actually do some goofiness with swapping the background window over to the account to which the negative transfer goes, and that may be the cause of the crash. In any case, happens every time on my two Linux machines.

The help is also broken, and I still rely on that a ton whenever I'm doing something new. You basically get blank screens on about half the help menu items. Some are populated, some aren't. It's very weird.

Other things that seem to be lacking in MoneyDance and GNUCash that I use all the time (I haven't tried either in about a year, though, so they may be updated):

* Most "planning" features, particularly setting up payment schedules automatically for debt reduction plans. My wife and I are on-track to get our house paid off in 9 years (only 5 years into the mortgage now), and it's largely due to this planning in Quicken.
* Automatic import into TurboTax. May not seem like a big deal, but when you run several businesses and hire an external tax preparation specialist, it's helpful if everything is in Quicken already that you can hand them a floppy disk with your TurboTax data for them to import into their whatever-program.
* Tax categories for just about everything under the sun, updated annually. I only use a handful of them, but when I know that a particular transaction is going to be a type of thing to end up on one of my forms at the end of the year, I can create a category for it and WOW! it appears on that form from TurboTax at the end of the year.
* Superb graphing & reporting. One-click graphs of where our money goes, easy reporting if we're on our debt reduction/savings plan targets, etc.

Admittedly, those features may be present in MoneyDance or GNUCash now. But they are definitely show-stoppers if I don't have them. And due to the bug in CXOffice, Quicken under Linux is really a non-starter at the moment, except when I need to glance at my finances. I regularly back up my data from my Windows machine, and import it into my GNU/Linux Quicken to I have the information available on my laptop in GNU/Linux all the time.

Really, the automated import stuff is a non-issue for me. I download a .qif just about daily from my credit union, import it, and match what's cleared. Takes about two minutes total (as long as I've kept up, if I'm a few days behind it takes a bit longer to check for matches), then I'm done for the day. End of the month, we review our numbers, see if we need to adjust the family budget to account for something, and get on with our lives. I wasted a HUGE amount of time learning the thing when we first bought it, though, in large part because I was trying to work around problems running it under Crossover Office on my GNU/Linux machines. I eventually mostly gave up, installed Windows XP on one of my home boxes, and just use that box for gaming & Quicken now.

Hope that answers the question! I'm eager to give MoneyDance anot

Re:Don't forget about Kapital

[Doc Hopper]

Looks like from the comment mirror I caught lower in the thread that MoneyDance has good graphing & budget functions. When it comes up, I'll have to check it out.

Things tying my family to Microsoft Windows at home:
1. Childrens Games
2. Quicken
3. Dad's Games
4. My wife's Print Shop app. Won't run under Wine, and I haven't found any good Print Shop-type apps under GNU/Linux that come with nearly the library of images she uses regularly on those six CDs...

So I personally use my Windows box a few minutes each night to update my Quicken information, and maybe 2 or 3 hours a week to play some Windows games that won't run on Linux yet (Battlezone II, NWN until just last week, Battlefield 1942). And the yutzes I LAN-party with always have some new weird game I'm not familiar with that they want to play, which only runs well on Windows...

One less thing making me reboot to use it (I prefer my machines run GNU/Linux most of the time) would be a good thing. Dance for me, money, dance...

Re:Don't forget about Kapital

[Mournblade]

I wonder if the quicken errors you're seeing are a result of Quicken's seemingly tight integration with IE for page views. How well does IE run on Crossover Office?

I may be completely off base here. Anyone that know's better, please speak up.

Re:Don't forget about Kapital

[Doc Hopper]

Internet Explorer as a file system and Internet browser works almost perfectly under Crossover Office. The only bug I've found worthy of note is that there seems to be a "flicker" in the icon bar as it refreshes icons several times a second. It's strange, but not completely distracting. The only other functionality that is missing from it is some O/S hooks. For instance, I have automatic proxy detection (WPAD) set up at home. IE on Windows, it works just fine, finds the proxy, and out it goes without me touching a thing. Same for Konqueror/KDE (although I had to do some strange hacks to the setup due to a current bug in how Konqueror figures out the WPAD address, fixed in CVS), it goes without a hitch, finds the proxy, woohaah. IE on GNU/Linux it just never seems to find the proxy and goes out directly; I think CXOffice hard-codes a hostname or something. There are a couple of other quirks, but as far as the rendering engine and page viewing goes, it's perfect. Plugins work really well, although sound is a bit choppy on slower machines with some plugins. Overall, it was a very satisfying purchase. It's particularly nice to be able to play those .wmv files I run across at large sites such as CNN, and to be able to handle Apple stuff with Quicktime. Yeah, I know mplayer can handle it, but I haven't had luck with the wrapper yet (not that I've tried too hard).

So I don't think it's the IE integration completely at fault there. The other part of Quicken that doesn't work is the multimedia stuff, but I think that may be due to how the CD-ROM is handled more than anything else. One day I'll look into it more.

Re:Don't forget about Kapital

[Anonymous Coward]

What did the folks at crossover support say?

Re:Don't forget about Kapital

[grnchile]

In my experience, Kapital crashes when trying to import QIF files. Maybe the promised new release will address this, but it's late and Kapital is of limited use to people trying to migrate until then.

Gnucash doesn't crash on QIF imports, but it does leave out the memo field (maybe I'll try to fix that if I can ignore all of the horror stories long enough to build it from source). Also, if you're going to use the QIF import feature and you use split transactions, you'll want to make sure you're using gnucash 1.8.2, not the version (1.8.1) that ships with the latest versions of Mandrake and Red Hat. Otherwise you'll be in for a rather rude surprise due to some import issues.

Moneydance QIF import had some minor problems on my 10 years of data, but it amounted a few duplicates in many thousands of transactions. It was easy to fix by hand.

The problem with using QIF as a storage format (as some have suggested) is that it's not well defined. There's a reason that there is movement away from it...

Re:Don't forget about Kapital

[brokeninside]

Give me a finance system backed by a real relational database, and not by some funny-formatted file. Some of the reporting problems would almost solve themselves that way.

GnuCash allows the use of PostgreSQL for a back end instead of their xml file format.

From the home page

[Lerxst Pratt]

The world's most intuitive personal finance software just got better! Moneydance 2003, the groundbreaking new financial tool is now available for all platforms. Moneydance can be trusted to keep all of your financial information safe, organized, and at your fingertips. After just a few minutes with Moneydance's simple interface and powerful features, you will wonder how you ever got along without it.

Protect your privacy - and your peace of mind With Moneydance, you will not be bombarded with advertisements on your desktop, nor have your personal information shared without your explicit consent. Unlike some other applications, Moneydance does not install third party software on your computer to monitor or restrict your activities.

Online banking and bill payment: no paper? no problem Pay your bills in seconds without writing a single check. With Moneydance you can automatically synchronize your records with transactions downloaded from your bank. Moneydance currently can perform online banking and bill payment with hundrededs of financial institutions. Moneydance also integrates nicely with the Paytrust online bill payment service.

Manage your budget Moneydance lets you easily create and manage multiple budgets and shows you where your accounts over or under budget. Simply specify how much you expect to earn or spend in each category for a given time interval (weekly, monthly, yearly). Moneydance can then show you a comparison of how your budget compares to your actual income and expenses for any time period.

Stay on schedule The ability to schedule recurring or future transactions in Moneydance makes it easy to plan for bills, loan payments, and paychecks. On the starting screen Moneydance shows all of your upcoming or overdue reminders, and you can view future and past reminders for any month. Special loan payment reminders automatically calculate principal and interest payments for mortgages and other loans. You can even print a monthly calendar that includes your scheduled items.

Visualize your wealth Another great reason to use Moneydance is that it lets you easily visualize your finances. With Moneydance's built-in graphs you can view your accounts from many angles. The Net Worth graph allows you to view the total value of all of your accounts over time. The Expenses graph provides a clear picture of where your money is going and when. Other graphs include Account Balance, Currency History, Income vs Expenses, and more. Moneydance can also remember commonly used graphs so that they are accessible with a single click from the main screen.

Get the details, quickly Moneydance provides a variety of reports detailing information about your accounts. Built-in reports include: Budget, Missing Checks, Net Worth, Account Balances, Cash Flow, Detailed Cash Flow, Transactions, Cost Basis, and VAT/GST. You can also tell Moneydance to remember commonly used reports so that they are accessible with a single click from the main screen.

International ease If you ever cross national borders you will appreciate Moneydance's built-in support for multiple currencies. Recording international transfers is a breeze - simply specify the amount and the currency, and Moneydance will automatically calculate the value in the context of the current account. You can download Up-to-date exchange rates from the Internet automatically with the OandA.com exchange rate updater extension.

Compatible, standards-based reliability Moneydance uses industry standard technologies such as OFX, QIF, SSL/TLS, Java, and XML to ensure compatibility with other software and services. In addition, with our open API and Extension Developer Kit you can be sure that third parties will always be able to integrate their services with Moneydance.

Understand your portfolio Today's investment portfolios are as complicated as ever. Moneydance can bring your investements into focus with support for tracking stocks, bonds, CDs, mutual funds, and more. The investment account overview sho

How robust is the database?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

I'm using one commercial product now which regularly gets its database corrupted even in brand-new files built from scratch. Sometimes it crashes when I try to back it up.

Never mind which product. I've heard the other one is worse anyway.

It's not just me. A Google(tm) search revealed that this has been a problem for years.

So -- what does Moneydance have on the back end? Can I trust it not to fail unrecoverably just before tax time? Are there repair facilities if something goes wrong? Do they work? Can I export to some simple text or XML format that I can inspect and patch if need be?

Re:How robust is the database?

[lylum]

Quicken... I have had the same problem, especially in conjunction with encrypted partitions :-( It really stinks

Re:How robust is the database?

[beep999]

I've been using MoneyDance almost daily for several years now and have never had the database get corrupted.

As extra security, MD can automatically back up the database before each save.

The data file is a single binary file (don't know the format).

- Brian

Re:How robust is the database?

[Flabby Boohoo]

Get a new computer, and try something other than an e-machine. Your issue is one of hardware, not software.

I have been running Quicken for YEARS and never once had this problem.

Oh, I suppose you could blame Windows, but of course that would be the easy way out.

In Java

[Euphonious Coward]

Now I remember why I didn't try it before.

It's written in Java, which means, by my experience, it will tend to get stuck in infinite loops, consume all of RAM, and (thereby) crash my other programs. People tell me that's the various JVMs' fault, not the language's, but I haven't discovered yet how to apply that fact usefully.

Are there any successful Free Software projects written in Java and popular outside of Java development shops? (I don't mean that question rhetorically -- post 'em if you got 'em.)

Re:In Java

[Anonymous Coward]

JEdit is the obvious example. I don't develop in Java, but I'm still in awe of it. I may yet become a Java convert.

Re:In Java

[Anonymous Coward]

DVArchive is a free and supremely good program for extracting video from Replay TVs across a network and then allowing you to stream the video back to your Replay TV. It is free and written in Java.

http://dvarchive.sourceforge.com

Re:In Java

[Anonymous Coward]

One day I'll learn to type and proofread...

JEdit

Re:In Java

[mbbac]

Apple's JVM is very good.

Re:In Java

[Anonymous Coward]

www.davidcampaign.net/dczip.html

Re:In Java

[pmorelli]

Well, your griefs only apply if you use microsoft's vm, or a vm before 1.3. 1.4 rocks, btw.

As for free software in java, try looking at all the serverside tools.

jakarta
jboss
(and about a million other projects...)

for client developer tools
tigris

I don't understand the distinction of development shops. If anything, developers are less tolerant of poorly performing tools than consumers, at least in my experience...

Re:In Java

[Watts Martin]

Well, there's Acquisition, a Gnutella client for OS X that's written in Java. Actually, it's based on Limewire, which is also written in Java. They're both open source.

There's also jEdit, which I haven't used but seems to be getting a bit of a cult following as a new GUI text editor.

Who names this stuff?

[fobbman]

Did I really need a visual of CPAs mimicking the Riverdance folks? I don't think I did.

Re:Who names this stuff?

[dacarr]

Hey, if they could do it in Third Rock, why not? Perhaps as an exhibit for the Doo-Dah parade....

I won't pay bills online ...

[MisanthropicProggram]

from clarkhoward.com - an Atlanta based consumer advocate -

" Depending on who you sign up with, fees range from free to $10 a month. Use a service that stands behind its electronic payment, such as paying late fees and handling problems with vendors if you made the payment several days before the due date. When you figure the cost of the check, stamp and envelope for every transaction, a small monthly fee is worth it. "

I, on the other hand, don't trust anyone. I have to put my signature on everything - even if it takes more time out of my life! It's the same when you use a debit card. If you want to dispute the charges, for whatever reason, the cash is gone from your account until the dispute is resolved - if ever. This is unlike a credit card where the credit card company takes the risk. With online bill paying or debit cards, you take all the risk. So, if someone rips you off, well, you eat it!!

In short you're risking, although unlikely,an event of having a very bad situation of having too much cash taken out of your account, or having a bogus charge against your account and having limited recourse to get the money back.

Re:I won't pay bills online ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're always risking something.

If you open a chequing account you run the risk of someone forging a check.

If you have a credit card you run the risk of someone using it without your permission.

If you keep your money in a paper bag under the mattress you run the risk of the boogeyman coming to steal it.

Re:I won't pay bills online ...

[robklaus]

If you want to dispute the charges, for whatever reason, the cash is gone from your account until the dispute is resolved - if ever. This is unlike a credit card where the credit card company takes the risk. With online bill paying or debit cards, you take all the risk. So, if someone rips you off, well, you eat it!!

I have to disagree with you here. If your debit card says "Visa" in the lower right hand corner, you are in fact protected: http://www.usa.visa.com/personal/cards/visa_check. html

Re:I won't pay bills online ...

[grub]

If you open a chequing account you run the risk of someone forging a check.

Arrgh! You use the proper spelling of "chequing" then lose all karma with "check".

Re:I won't pay bills online ...

[sl3xd]

If you keep your money in a paper bag under the mattress you run the risk of the boogeyman coming to steal it.

Of course the real risk in putting your money in a paper bag under the matress is that paper, like food, will rot over time.

There have been entire documentaries about a government facility (Secret Service, I believe has this task) in which the employees take cash that somebody stuffed in a paper bag and threw under a matress, and left it for 30 years. These people had the uninviting task of taking a lump of rotting pulp, and trying to positively ID as many of the bills as possible, so the person(s) affected could exchange it for new, crisp bills (basically a dollar-for-dollar exchange), which were then stuffed into a paper bag and thrown under a slightly newer matress.

But the truly pathetic thing is that I was so bored I actually watched such a documentary.

Dammit!

[Johnathon Walls]

Farked.

I mean Slashdotted.

You bastards!

What if you do not use Gnome?

[dangerweasel]

Gnucash is dependamt on a ton of Gnome libs. I use KDE and Fluxbox. I do not like Gnome. I do not want to have to install a shit load of libs for one item. I do nto use some CD burning apps for the same reason.

Re:What if you do not use Gnome?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably you'd also have to downgrade a few of your system libraries to get Gnucash working. It's quite picky about having the exact versions of about 30 libraries.

Honestly, I'd never use Gnucash because someday down the road I might need to access that data and be unable to get Gnucash running again on the "OS of the future". It's hard enough to get it running now.

MOD UP

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

DebtMinder

[NetMasta10bt]

I'm not affliated with DebtMinder. But I think it's an interesting solution to debt management that I'm not sure if the other 'checkbook' software have covered or not.

From Freshmeat:
Debt Minder is a specialized tool for debt management. It is user friendly, complete, functional, and economical, and considers account subtleties such as introductory APRs, varying interest rates, split interest rates, external payments, and more. Its visualization capabilities include pie charts, line graphs, bar charts, area graphs, debt to income ratios, and colored payoff tables. An integrated amortization calculator for American and Canadian methods is included, and payoff schedules can be exported to XML, CSV, and tab delimited files

It's Java based, and so runs on anything under the Sun ;)

Scuse me while I kiss the sky...

[dacarr]

"Please excuse me while I switch to a new server. It should be ready in about 5-10 minutes "

You are wise, young grasshopper.

On Moneydance experince:

[OrbNobz]

I tried out Moneydance about 2 years ago looking for an alternatice to M$ Money.
The interface was extremely bland in comparison, not nearly as many features, and also a few java bugs.
The main reason I had to resort back to Money was due to the fact I could not get MD to import my Money file. I would have had to start over. Unacceptable.
Perhaps things have gotten a lot better now, but since I can't reach the site...

- OrbNobz
Post-war Iraq

System requirements and download link

[lorcha]

System requirements for MoneyDance (according to their website):
64 Megabytes of RAM
Windows 95 or higher
166 Mhz or higher Processor

Apparently those requirements won't cut it for your webserver, eh?

Anyhow, I am downloading it right now and they are serving at ~ 10K/sec even though their front page just ain't loadin'. If you just want to try to download the thing, just point the 'ol browser here (windows version) and give 'em a try. :-)

Re:System requirements and download link

[Anonymous Coward]

>Windows 95 or higher

Does this mean then that *nix, MAC OS*, etc all fall into the 'higher' category?

I'm not surprised.

Re:System requirements and download link

[lorcha]

Depends on whom you ask, I suppose. My guess is that they indicate Win95 because I was downloading the Windows version of the product.

No OS flames, please. Believe me, if I could convince my company to use Linux instead of Windows I would. :-)

Re:System requirements and download link

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 95 or higher

"The box said 'Windows 95 or better', so I installed [Linux | MacOS X]."

Re:Worried? (only if I would use it)

[SpaceCadetTrav]

But back to reality... how often does that actually happen? Often enough to make up for the lack of obscurity? Depends on the application, I suppose. The point is that open source is not ALWAYS the most secure option.

bad url

[dwolf]

tell them to reboot their cable modem.

Bank of America

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Bank of America customer and all their online stuff works great thru Mozilla on my SuSE 8.1 system. All the usual secure encrypted SSL stuff too, even though they officially claim to only support IE4+ and Netscape 4x. They run the site on big Sun/Solaris iron so that makes me much more comfortable using their services than if it were Win/IIS. The only this that really scared me about the deal is that by some wierd coincidence the online ID number they assigned me is exactly the same string of digits as the ip address to my default gateway on my main router here where I work. I freaked out and thought it was some kind of evidence of big-brotherism, that somebody was watching my financials, till I found out that a good friend of mine who works for BofA in their Dallas office and manages their email systems had their Internet guys assign me that ID account number as a joke.

HAHAHA

[Kircle]

Found this on their website: "Please excuse me while I switch to a new server. It should be ready in about 5-10 minutes"

about time! :)

Re:HAHAHA

[Anonymous Coward]

They switched servers, but it took them longer than they advertised. Don't get your hopes up though, I realized that they didn't say that they were going to switch to a new server that could actually handle a Slashdotting.

Yep, they're down again.

Re:Worried? (only if I would use it)

[reinard]

While I definitely agree with you, the statement

but "security through obscurity and good coding" is probably better than "security though good coding" alone.

still holds up. You just assumed in your reply that the code may in fact not be good/secure code. If it is though, then obscurity is an added security benefit. The compromise way might work for this one: keep the code secret, but let a reputable security companies review it. Personally (even though I don't like that scheme) I think that is actually more secure.

Links to installs

[Lerxst Pratt]

Links to installs:

Linux/x86/glibc2.1+
http://moneydance.com/download/2003/Unix/moneydanc e_linux_i386_jre131.tar.gz

SuSE 7.2 RedHat 7.1 Mandrake 8.0
http://moneydance.com/download/2003/Unix/moneydanc e_linux_i386_jre130.tar.gz

Linux/ppc
http://moneydance.com/download/2003/Unix/moneydanc e_linux_ppc_jre130.tar.gz

FreeBSD/x86
http://moneydance.com/download/2003/Unix/moneydanc e_freebsd_i386_jre118_elf.tar.gz

Solaris/x86
http://moneydance.com/download/2003/Unix/moneydanc e_sunos_i386_jre130.tar.gz

Solaris/sparc
http://moneydance.com/download/2003/Unix/moneydanc e_sunos_sparc_jre130.tar.gz

Other
http://moneydance.com/download/2003/Unix/moneydanc e_other.tar.gz

Re:Links to installs

[Ded Bob]

The JRE used with FreeBSD looks a bit out of date. I have JDK v1.3.1 (native) installed on my box. I have not used v1.1.8 in quite some time.

Re:Links to installs

[sreilly]

I have JDK v1.3.1 (native) installed on my box.

In that case, use the "other" download option on the Unix download/install page. That will explain how to install moneydance using an existing version of Java on your system.

When running FreeBSD it is always better to install java yourself (to get the 1.3.1 version from ports) than to use the old least-common-denominator one that comes with moneydance.

I want to tongue your conservative balls

[Anonymous Coward]

ungh let me buttfuck you with a confederate flag condom on you big hunk of patriot.

Ah yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

> that lets developers easily add and distribute new
> features to the program.

Hope there's some kind of trust relationship here...otherwise, I'd be looking for the "I'll them sacks o' money" feature.

Re:Ah yes...

[sreilly]

Moneydance uses a public key system to verify the authenticity of extensions. If an extension doesn't have a signature that Moneydance trusts then the user gets a big warning message and an option to override the security (so you can load self-developed extensions).

Read that "MonkeyDance"

[Greyfox]

And, having my /. habits honed to a fine edge, jumped right in without reading the post either, expecting to find something about Steve Ballmer. Oh well.

Re:Read that "MonkeyDance"

[Fesh]

Was going to make a similar comment myself... Glad I did a "Find" before making a monkey of myself. *chuckle*

MONEY Dance?

[pjt48108]

I thought that was what Michael Flattley does everytime some moron shells out $$ for a Riverdance ticket.

An unfortunate software title for those of us disaffected, frustrated theatre types in geekdom.

Who still balances their checkbook?

[ChicoLance]

It used to be very necessary to balance your checkbook, back when banks kept account balances on paper, and human errors were common, but is this still necessary?

I stopped balancing my checkbook a couple of years ago, and have saved myself a lot of greef. I can check my balances and verify that nothing is improperly charged by using current web interfaces, and if I do goof on my in-my-head calculations of how much money is left in my account, most banks will give free overdraft protection, which I just pay back when my check comes in.

This can sound kind of silly, but it has made my life a lot easier, and spot audits have shown that everything is working great.

--Lance

Re:Who still balances their checkbook?

[cK-Gunslinger]

Agreed. I've cut out a lot of time by switching to a "modern" bank that has a secure web interface as well as free bill paying abilities. Combine that with my check card (used rarely, if I need to float $ for a day or 2) and instant debit card (used often, as it instantly deducts the $ from account.)

Re:Who still balances their checkbook?

[cr0sh]

I do - and it still matters.

I cannot tell you the number of times I have balanced my checkbook and came across double-entries on the bank statement, from the same place, nearly at the same time - like they ran the card through twice! If I was looking at this online, I may not see this discrepancy (unless I looked really close).

I currently use the Checkfree software for all of this, but they recently moved to Quicken, so if the damn Moneydance website ever comes up - I want to see how it compares - in the meantime, I will probably end up installing Quicken.

I have thought that maybe I should go back to doing all of this "by hand" - but I love to pay my bills via electronic means. Most solutions for Linux (like GNUcash), since they don't offer EBT transactions (yet), mean you have to do double entry (once for the online payment, like through the bank, and once in the money program). Double entry can and will trip you up, though - which can be a bad thing at the end of the month (nothing like finding out you have a negative balance because you double entered, or entered incorrectly, your paycheck amount).

I have been trying to come up with a different method to allow me to do online paying without double entry - I was thinking something like a backwards method, where you keep your receipts, then when you "balance", you go through the online statement and compare the receipts to the statement, those that match do one thing, those that don't (or seem like theres a double) do another - but this seems like a large kludge that probably would have problems as well.

All I want is a simple program that replicates the account activity page on my checkbook, allows bill paying from it, and has a few simple reports - nothing fancy. Checkfree's original software, while only allowing comms via a modem, was just that simple program - perfect for what I needed. Now it is going away (like I knew it would eventually). I can only hope the special version of Quicken they sent out is simple as well - I guess I will find out this weekend.

Oh, by the way - one other thing you find out when you balance your account are the number of transactions that *don't* get reported to your account. Many times, you might buy something, and due to one reason or another, the transaction never gets sent to your account - so, free stuff (or at least until they figure it out, which I have yet to encounter)! One of my friends got a free computer system this way (ok, that is on the extreme end - most of the time for me it has been small gas and food purchases)...

Re:Who still balances their checkbook?

[pmz]

Many times, you might buy something, and due to one reason or another, the transaction never gets sent to your account - so, free stuff (or at least until they figure it out, which I have yet to encounter)!

Also, I've had bill payments get lost in the mail. If I didn't catch this myself, who knows if I'd still have running water (and still have excellent credit).

Re:Who still balances their checkbook?

[angle_slam]

Also, I've had bill payments get lost in the mail. If I didn't catch this myself, who knows if I'd still have running water (and still have excellent credit).

If your payment is lost, your next statement will show it. Most utilities and banks will just simply warn you if you are late.

Re:Who still balances their checkbook?

[angle_slam]

I hate to say it myself, but I agree. I spent so much time doing bills on Quicken before, and balancing my checking account every month. After 5 years of doing it, I realized that the bank had never made a mistake, and it seemed like a waste of my time. Now, my payments are made automatically, and I just look at the statements to see if anything looks fishy.

Re:Who still balances their checkbook?

[cr0sh]

I hate credit card companies - you are *one* day over the due date, and they hit you with a (large) "late payment fee" - every other business will typically have a "grace period" of 10-14 days, but not CC companies - no sir!

Crazy thing is, you wouldn't believe how most businesses are when it comes to credit extended to them by *other businesses* - many times they will run tabs for months on end, then sometimes in the end just default on the loan, and let their legal/accounting dept work something out - but they expect ordinary joes to be "perfect"...

BAH!

Re:Who still balances their checkbook?

[pmz]

If your payment is lost, your next statement will show it.

The next bill did show it, but it was so counter-intuitively organized that it was very easy to miss. This reminds me of one other type of bill that is far worse than any water bill: nursing home bills. I've seen only one, but that was enough for me.

Most utilities and banks will just simply warn you if you are late.

This depends on whether they are in a position of conflict of interest. I can imagine credit card companies and loan companies stalling to rack up pentalties. This might be illegal, but I wouldn't be suprised if it is common.

limewire...

[Anonymous Coward]

theres one...

freebsd is not an os that randomly reboots

[Anonymous Coward]

check your hardware and try again before you fud because you can't handle what you asked for

Re:freebsd is not an os that randomly reboots

[sreilly]

it may be a hardware issue, I couldn't really say right now. About every 2 minutes there was an error message about a missing vpage and it would reboot. It was a custom compiled kernel to be as lean as possible, but I think it was probably running out of memory anyway. I won't know until the storm subsides.

I was not spreading FUD, I was telling you what happened. I am a big a FreeBSD advocate... hell I'm running it on my server, aren't I?

Re:freebsd is not an os that randomly reboots

[raydobbs]

Ummm, check the obvious - did you disable something in the kernel config that it says for you not to do?

Is your swap at least 1.5x the size of your physical memory?

FreeBSD just doesn't go into rebooting fits unless you really screw something up (either accidentally or intentionally)

Nice EULA

[lorcha]

Well, it looks like you might be routing some requests to a different box or httpd server. At any rate, the server that I connected to looks like it is experiencing SSI issues because the EULA it's asking me to "sign" before doing the trial download is

"<!--#include file="license.txt"-->"

On the bright side, it is quite possibly the most easy-to-understand EULA I've ever read... :-)

Re:Nice EULA

[sreilly]

looks like it is experiencing SSI issues

should be fixed now. thanks!

Tracking money is wrong.

[uberdave]

The problem I have with all of these money management softwares is that they have pathetic budgetting features, if they have them at all. Quicken, Gnucash, etc are great at tracking your money after you have spent it. However, the point of money management is not in tracking how it is spent, but in projecting and planning what *future* spending is going to be. I don't want to find out at the end of the month that I am short by $50. I want to find out at the beginning of the month that my projected spending is going to put me $50 in the hole. That way, I can cut back on something so that I don't wind up with too much month left at the end of my paycheck.

What I would like to see is limits on spending categories. For example: You decide that you are going to spend $100 on gas. Suddenly you have to go way out of town. When you enter the gas receipts and the total comes up to $120, there should be a warning dialog: "You have exceeded your allowable spending in this category." From there you would have to allocate funds from other spending categories (say dining out expenses) to cover the excess. The software should warn you that you need to cut back, and where you can cut back, (based on how you planned to spend the money originally) so that you don't spend more than you earn.

The bottom line is that you can't spend more than you have, and looking at where your money went will not help. You have to manage where your money is going to go.

Re:Tracking money is wrong.

[gimple]

My wife and I use this software--Money Matters. It budgets exactly as you describe. It has helped us truly manage our money.

Re:Tracking money is wrong.

[JTB]

You ought to try MS Money. I use it in exactly the way you describe. Every time I open it up, it tells me where I've already overspent my budget for the month. Every week, I check where I have money left in the budget, and spend accordingly.

$120 left in the grocery budget on the last Sunday of the month? Let's eat steak! Gas budget is over by $20? Better reallocate from groceries...

Not only that, but it also includes a "Lifetime Planner," which tells you how much you'll want to earn when you're having kids, paying for college, retiring, and so on.

Re:Tracking money is wrong.

[An Onerous Coward]

Oooh! "Biblically based advice from financial teacher Larry Burkett!" I'll bet you can't find *that* particular feature in Quicken. I'll take my financial cues from the Trinity Broadcasting Network, thankyouverymuch.

Re:Tracking money is wrong.

[glass_window]

You do know that quicken 2002 does this, right? You just have to take some time and set up your budget, and then tell it to alert you if you go over that budget.

Re:Tracking money is wrong.

[tongue]

not to be knocking your comment or anything, but how the hell is this modded "Funny"? I mean, its pretty straightforward to me, i use MSMoney the same way. I imagine a health percentage of its users do the same.

MODERATORS, GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES! MENTIONING MS DOESN'T MAKE SOMETHING FUNNY!

Re:Tracking money is wrong.

[The AtomicPunk]

Don't live so close to the edge. It's a lot easier.

Yeah, some people have no choice, but 98% of the people out there do, and 98% of those live on (or over) the edge. I can't tell you how many idiots I've worked with that made 6 figures that live paycheck to paycheck because they have no concept of not indulging their every whim and desire.

(sorry, impersonal rant :))

Re:Tracking money is wrong.

[BJH]

I think the moderators were laughing at the "Lifetime Planning" part of your comment.

It's kind of hard to plan ahead when you don't have a life...

Re:Tracking money is wrong.

[TTop]

Every version of Quicken that I've used (since 98) allows you to budget and alert you if you've gone over your budget. The Quicken summary page (the first one you see opening the app) also lets you customize individual bar graphs for individual budget categories of your choosing so you can see how far along you are towards your budgeted amount.

When was the last time you even looked at one of these programs?

Re:Tracking money is wrong.

[krogoth]

I noticed that too; I asked budgetting on the gnucash mailing list almost 2 years ago and volunteered to try implementing it, but everyone who was interested wanted other features implemented first to support it. I finally wrote my own program last year (requires KDE 3); it doesn't warn you when you go over your budget, but it's included budgetting since the second release :)

Re:What if you do not use KDE?

[vocaro]

KDE apps have the same problem: dependencies on a ton of KDE libs. That is, if a user runs GNOME for everything but wants to use a single KDE app, then he has to install a ton of KDE libs, as well. So it goes both ways. The important thing is, no matter what you choose for your desktop environment, you can still run both KDE and GNOME apps on the same system since they all go through XWindows. It's just a matter of installing a few libraries. If that's too much trouble for you, then I guess there's a ton of software you'll never be able to use: Java, Mozilla, and many other packages that require large libraries. Your loss, IMO.

This is better than a spreadsheet HOW?

[jonadab]

I've never understood the rational behind Quicken and its ilk. A
special app just for finances... because, after all, finances are
so different from the rows and columns of numbers that spreadsheets
were designed to handle. It's like the people who want a "resume
program" to use to create a resume, because a resume is so different
from the formatted text that a word processing application was made
to handle.

Huh?

I don't understand people. I understand computers pretty well,
but I don't understand people. Probably never will.

Hey, I wish the folks at MonkeyDance luck. If they're half as
successful as the Quicken people, I guess they'll be doing pretty
okay for themselves, though I certainly won't understand how.

Re:This is better than a spreadsheet HOW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want to spend all that time adding the formulas and checking them in my spreadsheet program, not to mention figuring out how to automatically download my transations from financial institutions and all that when I can just go and use Quicken, Gnucash, etc.?

I think you have a very limited view of what finances are and what people use them for. Either that, or you love reinventing the wheel.

By the way, I certainly see the attraction in a resume program. Your word processor is all fine and dandy if you make just one or two resumes and stick to them, but if you want the flexiblity to quickly rearrange your resume's look and feel depending upon whom you are sending it to, then you'll want a flexible tool.

Re:This is better than a spreadsheet HOW?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are so right. In fact, I am going to write letters to all these silly companies that produce accounting software and let them know they are wasting their time. AccPac

Microsoft (Great Plains)

And of course Oracle, and peoplesoft, and RealWorld, and American Business Systems, and a couple of hundred others. How could they be so foolish? Just wait until people realise that all they need is a spreasheet :)

Re:This is better than a spreadsheet HOW?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never understood the rationale behind Excel and its ilk. A special app just for adding numbers -- because, after all, financial bits are so different from the numbers the CPU is designed to process anyway. It's like the people that want a "word processor" to create formatted streams of text, because that's so different from the byte sequences that are in the computer memory anyway.

C'mon, people! The computer is a general purpose machine! There's no point in limiting it with all these special purpose "applications".

Re:This is better than a spreadsheet HOW?

[angle_slam]

I've never understood the rational behind Quicken and its ilk. A special app just for finances... because, after all, finances are so different from the rows and columns of numbers that spreadsheets were designed to handle.

Automated check writing is a good reason that is not easily available in a spreadsheet. And, while it's true that most other features can be duplicated in a spreadsheet, it has already been done. $30-40 for a Quicken-type program is not much when you consider how much time you would have to spend to create a spreadsheet that had all the categorization features of Quicken.

Freedom from monopolies Was Re:.....Gnome?

[mrmeval]

I used Guhnome till Redhat 8.0 and an now it's
non-compliant window manager is annoying.

I did enter tons of data into gnucash, it's format
for it's files is lousy, can't even read it with gnu tools and the newest one can't even read the old ones files. I think I entered three
items in the new one (I had entered several hundred in the old one) and it howled at each one. No bulk entries here nope.

Not only that it's invasive auto-typing howling menagerie of twiddly bits/blinks and blithers drove me nuts. There is no 'feature' (i.e. from moron to expert) reduction capabilities, everyone is treated as a GuhNucash dummy.

Until these simple things are fixed I'm using KDE which is compliant (with xawtv) and gave up on any cash management system linux or otherwise.

I may just pay these people for the privilege of using software that will run on MY LINUX SYSTEM and have a dedicated staff to make SURE IT WORKS.

I don't want freedom from spending money.

I want freedom from Bill Gates, Microsoft and Monopolies.

Hell I *like* spending money on neat things.

Re:Freedom from monopolies Was Re:.....Gnome?

[Anonymous Coward]

I did enter tons of data into gnucash, it's format for it's files is lousy,

The format is XML, you can hack it with vi if necessary.

...and the newest one can't even read the old ones files.

There are no problems between the stable releases.

Yes, the interface could be improved, but that is why it is open. It does use some Gnome libraries, but where is the problem? I have both KDE and Gnome stuff on my desktop. Both work.

Re:Freedom from monopolies Was Re:.....Gnome?

[mrmeval]

My main gripe was that it would not read in my old data. When I went to enter the new data it wouldn't shut up about saving records, which means about 200 clicks. Also it's auto fill in features are worthless for bulk data entry of disparate items. I did like the earlier version but it refused to compile on RH8, this was the latest as of maybe February. You may adore using vi to edit XML by hand, I don't. That's not my job anyway it's the programs. I'll probably buy the program, it's cheap, alot cheaper than my time editing an unknown XML document by hand, with vi, might as well have offered me esmacks.

The missing app

[jhr0771]

I have my laptop running only Linux for almost 2 years but I had to go always to my wife's machine (Windows2000) to use M$Money. The features I use the most are the recurring transaction reminders and the report about the future balance of the account based on those reminders. I haven't found any alternative until now. I tried MoneyDance yesterday(a preview) and it works great ! and with the extension of Balance Predicter(it needs a litle bit more work), I'm leaving definitly M$ !.

Re:The missing app

[pbur]

Amen to the future account balance forecasting feature of MS Money. I too have yet to find another package that does this, although it seems like a easy enough thing to do.

Where did you find the Balance Predicter Extension? I didn't see it on their site.

Re:The missing app

[jhr0771]

http://moneydance.com/preview/

Quicken's file format is open, write to it, dammit

[aquarian]

FYI, Quicken's .qif file format is wide open, a de facto standard that anyone can write to. I don't understand why more developers don't take advantage of this fact. If you're writing a new Quicken-replacement program you should just use it, rather than reinvent the wheel -- whether your product is commercial, GPL, or whatever. You can download the .qif spec from Intuit.

Intuit has more incentive to keep their file formats open becuase what keeps Quicken and especially Quickbooks going is the ability for developers to create add ons. Quickbooks has a whole industry of add-on developers. By using the .qif standard, you can plug into this community too. The more stuff your product will interface with, the more attractive it will be, be it commericial, GPL, or whatever.

Not quite

[benoitg]

Clearly you don't know the problems surrounding the qif format very well.
-I can't be used as the main save format of an app, because of the lack of a transaction ID field. Quicken sure as hell doesn't use it as it's file format, only an import-export format.
-There is no definitive spec on the file format available from intuit. All the docs available are listed here http://libofx.sourceforge.net/links.html and the most complete certainly isn't intuit's. Even the account type identifiers sometimes change depending on the language of your Quicken (examples for example, !Type:Bank becomes |Type:Banque in french Quicken 2000)

WARNING: Bad Mental Pictures :)

[JourneymanMereel]

That's probably the reason a GNU/StripClub would never work. Can you imagine a bunch of hackers contributing to the show?

Still missing?

[dbitter1]

I wrote my own financial DB- not pretty, but it handles a few things I haven't seen seemlessly implemented in _ANY_ financial program, commercial or otherwise:

• Multiple currencies: If I get a receipt in CHF or EUR, I want to put _that_ number in and calculate the balance (or exchange rate, pick one) appropriately
• Multiple dates: If I do a transfer from one bank to another, there is an issue date (when I do it), a transaction date (when it actually occurs) and a reconcile date (when I see the money). Most programs will change both transactions if you change one. Using sets of dates allows keeping of the referential integrity as well as multiplicity...
• Statment Balance Date: I can run a query (yeah, it's just a GROUP BY statement, but can the big boys do it?) that tells me my balance each month. Sounds simple, but what if you screw up putting in a date- you can check each month's statement to find what month is now unreconciled
• Ad-hoc Queries:If all I want is the data, a wizard sucks compared to a few SQL statements. Did Quicken come up with an ODBC driver to their proprietary format?

No-thanks

[dh003i]

Until there's a Free (libre) financial manager available for GNU/Linux, I won't be using one.

I am not an idiot. I know how to manage an account. For my needs, there's nothing I can do in Quickbooks/etc that I can't do with a spreadsheet program.

Re:No-thanks

[hughk]

Try gnucash. The price is right and it is really quite flexible. The documentation could be better, but that is always something that lags a little for free programs.

Macworld reviewed Moneydance 3.2

[Disoriented]

The review is online here.

Not a great review, but maybe 2003 addresses some of the concerns raised here.

Re:Macworld reviewed Moneydance 3.2

[Anonymous Coward]

That review is from Dec 2001, when OSX was kinda new and its Java2 implementation sucked, and OS9 didn't have Java2 at all. The program probably runs much better now, even without the new 2003 version.

what about canada?

[DuckWing]

Does it support Candian currency? What about Canadian Loan/mortgage amortization? Canadian banking systems? etc.? Just curious.

Re:what about canada?

[dacarr]

Well, by the looks of it, unless the Canadian currency structure has recently been shifted to base 9, there should be no problem.

Why GPL?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other open-source licenses *besides* the GPL, you know.

Please Explain

[uberdave]

I don't grok it. With Quicken, the sum of all of my accounts equals how much money I have/owe. With GnuCash, the sum of all of my accounts is always zero. Money never enters or leaves the system, it just moves around. While I appreciate the error detectability of the thing, at the end of the day/week/year, I want there to be *more* money in the system than when I started.

Re:Please Explain

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot, it's called double entry bookkeeping and it's much better for keeping track of your finances. You don't think of accounts as just things like checking accounts. Everything has to come from one account and go into another. So for your paycheck, you make a transfer from the income account into /assets/checking. Keeping track of missing transactions and being able to track what your doing with your money is much easier then.

Re:Please Explain

[Anonymous Coward]

you idiot, then how can you run a profit/loss report ? If it always zeros out, that is useless.

Re:Please Explain

[uberdave]

I know it is called double entry bookkeeping, and that money is transferred from one account to another. What I don't understand is why you would do that. It doesn't match what is happening in reality. When I get paid, I don't transfer money from an income account to a bank account. Money just "magically" appears in my bank account. Sure, it is a transfer from my employer's account to my account, but why should I be keeping track of my employer's expenses?

The last major barrier...

[Yort]

I can't help feeling skeptical, but if this is decent software... this could be the answer to the last thing keeping my non-geeky friends/family on Linux. My mother, for instance, has been so annoyed with Windows lately that the only real hesitation she has about moving to Linux is the loss of using Quicken to keep track of finances.

If this thing is even marginally like Quicken, I'll snap it up in a heartbeat - one for them, and one for me! Yes, I know there's GnuCash, but it just wasn't up to snuff last I looked. Online access is a major plus, and if they don't have to learn a whole bunch of new stuff, I think I have a chance.

Here's hoping this is good software.

don't blow it

[thvv]

I have used Quicken for a dozen years. Originally it was a wonderful product, easy to use, helpful, and simple. Over time it has

• bloated with a sink full of dubious features
• had worse and worse support
• come out with almost yearly cosmetic releases
• abandoned Mac support

I have been planning to go to OS X and I am glad to hear that I won't have to buy another Quicken.

Before I buy, there are two issues I will need answers to. One was already mentioned: database robustness. Quicken went through some rough times with corruption before they came up with repair procedures that were effective and safe.

The other is check printing. If you can print on 3-up checks, great.. but how do you print other than three at a time? This is a horrible mess, depends on all kinds of obscure stuff that changes with every combination of OS and printer. Quicken's method of aligning and printing checks on dot matrix printers was one of the things that helped it succeed early. But debugging this stuff on hundreds of printer models will be tedious and costly. I suggest that you create a user discussion board where people can share their experience on this sub-topic.

Re:Don't forget about Kapital - OT

[GarryOwen]

Just a note, you may want to reconsider paying off your house so quickly. If you can think of any way to make a return higher than 6%, extend your mortage and invest the money elsewhere. The low interest rates plus tax benefits of mortages might make it worthwhile to do so.

I WOULDN'T TRUST OPEN SOURCE CODE

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean fuck, every other Open Source project has been a giant turd. I wouldn't want to sink my money into one. I can only imagine how bad it would fuck up my finances because I misconfigured the way I access some shoddy CVS repository.

For PalmOS handhelds, PocketMoney

[Anonymous Coward]

PocketMoney, from Catamount Software.

The manual lists these scenarios for using PocketMoney with external applications:

• Desktop is Main, PocketMoney Mirrors Desktop
• Desktop is Main, PocketMoney Holds Balances, Omits Detailed Transactions
• PocketMoney is Main, Desktop Mirrors PocketMoney

According to the manual, the software's author uses the last scenario. In other words, he uses PocketMoney to manage his finances and downloads data to Quicken in order to generate pretty graphs.

PM2QIF is a Perl Script for converting PocketMoney databases to QIF files. It was specifically written for use with GNUCash.

Howtos...

[hughk]

After struggling to get VAT working with gnucash, I found that yes it was all there. It is just not documented very well.

WIth Linux, we have the man/info pages, we have the docs in the kernel tree but what really helps are the howtos. This is what some people call task orientated documentation. So rather than having to look at a number of different places, I can look at a single howto for, say CD-recording.

We sort of have a simple howto in the form of the tutorial for personal finance. As you say, conversion notes from Quicken and MS Money would help, probably for European users, a howto for VAT would be nice as well. The functionality is there, but sometimes it is interesting to find it.

Stop bitch'n

[mpechner]

I've haven't kept a physical checkbook in years. I've trusted Quicken up until 2002. The new reconciliation feature was done is a really piss poor manor.

I changed to MoneyDance because I just wanted a check registry. Something that read QIF files that i downloaded from my bank.

It has worked great and has been around for years.

The parent company does a full bookkeeping application.

Be happy that there is company out there doing quality financial software that does not require you pay the Microsoft Tax on the OS.

It can look after your stocks!!!

[hughk]

they may not actually be worth very much, but gnucash will certainly keep account of them and tell you how little they are worth with the portfolio monitoring system.

On OSX especially this is a big deal

[Nugget]

I'm very eager to give this package a shot because the OSX port of Quicken is just a pale shadow of its Win32 cousin. Quicken on MacOS has nothing even close to approximating the depth and features of the more established Windows offering.

It'll be nice to have some serious competition on the OSX side of things. (and, no, gnucash isn't and won't be serious competition until it gets online banking support)

Magic!

[fm6]

...its not pixie dust...

Thank God for small favors!

Cart before the horse

[Anonymous Coward]

Love, then money? Never heard of it.

No, he needs money. Then he gets the lovin.

Why does the summary have to have a Linux slant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the actualy summary ofthe article have to have a Linux slant? It wasn't "made-for-linux". It was Made for Java, and has been around a while now. It's not like Linux was an afterthought. If it weren't for Java being available on the Linux platform, it wouldn't even be listed...and chances are not even slashdotted....
Funny no mention of OS/2 in it, either. Was typing 3 out of the 4 possibilities too much for your little hands?

Gnucash user

[rwa2]

I've been tracking my finances with GnuCash since late 2000. Still a few annoyances... it takes entirely too long to import QIF files from my various financial institutions. As a result, I only update it every three to six months. But it's pretty good at helping you enter in transactions by hand.

I have to admit though, it took several tries and a basic college course in financial accounting (taught by a former employee of Anderson Consulting, no less :) to understand and get rull use out of it.

While I've found the graphing and reporting features of GnuCash to be indispensible once you get all that information properly inputted, I guess the main thing to realize is that it's just a tool: only your own knowledge of how finances work and your skill in using it will determine how much you can actually get out of it.

As for me, I still have yet to figure out how to use GnuCash's budgeting feature, so I can actually plan out ahead for a few months/years - probably the ultimate goal of financial tracking and analysis. Hopefully by then, the QIF import features will have improved enough so that the situation I'm tracking will be up to date instead of 3 months behind.

Contact Intuit (maker of quicken) for a Linux port

[rleibman]

I just sent a quick note to Intuit begging for a Linux port.
Please contact them at "http://www.intuit.com/company/contact_us/index.ht ml" and give them every reason you can think of.
I've been a MS money user since version 1.0 (it came free and I've been paying for upgrades since), and use quickbooks for business, but I can't stand having to reboot to windows to do it.
The past few days I've been attempting to move to gnucash, it has a LONG way to go, it can't even print 3-to-a-page checks easily!
I know Intuit is far from open source, but the unavailability of a good money management package is one more reason why people don't use Linux.

always risking

[Anonymous Coward]

You're always risking something.

True, BUTT! (and there's always a big butt) it is still important to intelligently assess risk by degrees. The point being made about the differences in how risk is handled by credit cards vs banks is, I think, a very worthwhile one.

Re:What if you do not use KDE?

[dangerweasel]

My problem is that, maybe they should call it gnomecash. Or make it dependent on libraries that I am going to have installed on any given Linux install. I know I can install and use both desktops, I did that in the past. I happen to like KDE. I do not want to have to clutter my hard drive with Gnome crap. And the apps you mention are not windows manager specific. I am running Java AND Mozilla on a KDE/Fluxbox system and I DIDN'T have to install any Gnome libs to do it.

Save me... from old technology

[SnakeStu]

I'm still using an old copy of MoneyCounts from the 90s, which luckily handled Y2K but it doesn't export to QIF or anything else that's readily useful. There used to be an offer to send data in to have it converted, but I don't have that much trust in some faceless company. I was so disappointed when Parsons Technology sold out, but now it's gone from disappointment to significant inconvenience and concern. I don't want to stay locked into this thing, but I haven't found an alternative that I like and I don't favor losing all my financial history when I make the switch. :-/

FWIW, I looked at Moneydance before and didn't like it. I'll guess I'll give it another look.

Or maybe I should just go back to ExpressCheck for DOS... ;-)

great to see you again, sean!

[ungerware]

I've been using MD for several years now. Fantastic program. If you're still reading posts here, Sean, could you tell us if there's a new url for the moneydance-info archives and subscription page?

Thanks,
Rich

Online banking wasn't our fault...

[Goonie]

In a previous life, I was a gnucash developer (that's no longer the case - I have a thesis to do :). We knew everybody wanted online banking. However, to actually get it working, you really need support from financial institutions. If I recall correctly, at the time, we couldn't find American financial institutions were interested in working with us.

Perhaps as the Linux desktop gets better established (it's coming quite close IMHO) banks will be more interested.

Arbitrary currency: frequent flyer miles

[Anonymous Coward]

This feature is very useful when you start playing with it. I made a pair of currencies called "miles" and "points" and between them, I can have an at a glance view of all my frequenty flyer miles and other reward points.

At the moment it is just me doing this on my own. But since this is GNU software, I expect that someone will write a screen-scraper based way of having this information automatically synced with the airline's site, etc....

Two options

[brokeninside]

(1) Your profits exactly equal your losses.
(2) Your accounts are set up wrong.

Let's just say it works for me, I get deeper into the red every month.

Crossplatform ??

[Flywheel]

Crossplatform ??
It works on Linux, MacOS and Windy ...

It reminds me of the good ole : Yes ofcause it is crossplatform, it runs om both 98 and NT.

Re:Crossplatform ??

[Flywheel]

A better word would be multiplatform!

What about international users?

[Kaiwen]

The problem I have with the products I've tried (GNUCash, Quicken, MS Money) is that they're both checkbook- and US-centric. While Quicken has loosened up in recent versions, it is still, fundamentally, a check register program, and all its tax categories and advice are, of course, applicable to US tax codes.

Taiwanese, however, use neither US tax codes nor checking accounts. I personally live out of ATM machines; I've set up my central account in Quicken as a cash account, which works tolerably well, but it can be awkward at times when Quicken tries to treat it as a checking account. And I won't even mention how much time it took to purge the default category set of its US biases.

When your servers are less busy, I'll download a demo. I was a bit surprised, however, to discover that, despite the cross-platform support, the installer is still platform specific, forcing me to download separate Windows and Linux versions of what is essentially.

Speaking of which, can I share databases between Linux and Windows?

I'm also interested in the Palm-synching plugin. What does it require on the Palm?

Lee Kaiwen,
Taiwan, ROC

Appgen, Moneydance, and other things

[The Breeze]

I am so confused.

Appgen used to make Moneydance - did they buy it from Sean Reiley, and then sell it back? Moneydance has always had a decent reputation and has been around since 1998 as far as I know, quite possibly longer.

Appgen makes MyBooks...I've been trying that off and on for two years..quite cool in that it is cheap, source code is available (no GPL tho) for extra $$$, and it runs on Linux, Mac & Windows, and the licenses are good for any mix of machines...a 5 user license will run on a Linux server with Mac, Windows, and Linux clients all at the same time...quite uncool in that it's rather unpolished in places and awkward to use at times, and getting the thing to print invoices is a royal pain.
You can use Appgen's scripting language to make invoices, but the program was originally designed to print invoices on pre-printed forms. Yuck.

Appgen sales-types are helpful and eager to let tech support help people who are evaluating, and they say that they were writing big accounting apps on UNIX heavy metal for 20 years or so. I don't know, I'm a bit worried about the rumors in this thread about Appgen's finances. I am still considering purchasing MyBooks but am in no rush.

GNUCash is a joke. I had no problem using it as of release 1.4 for personal finances, and I've heard it's quite feature rich now at 1.8. A joy to use. The problem is it's practically impossible to install. GNUCash has a reputation for being the epitome of dependancy hell. I'm sorry, I love hacking around as much of the next person but 60+ shared libraries is too much for me. At one point the website actually said "Don't try to install this unless your distribution comes with it". Sigh. A wonderful product, GNUcash, if you can actually get it to work. I'm at the point now where I need my computer to actually work and spending hours trying to solve the dependancies for GNUCash is too much. I cannot understand why they put so much work into something that is so difficult to install.

I'm thinking about taking SQL Ledger for a spin, a bit troubled by comments some of its developers made a while back thinking that user security wasn't that big a deal, but looks like a nifty product...

There's a site out there run by some guy that has about 15 accounting programs both GPL & propietary...I can't find it tho...

Anyhow...just rambling - if anyone can post the history of both Appgen & Moneydance I'm sure that others besides myself would appreciate it.

Must be able to do what my excel spreadsheet does

[Gourry]

I'm downloading now and hopeful that this one is ok..but in my experience none of them do what
my simple excel spreadsheet does.

I keep an excel spreadsheet that has a worksheet for every month of the year and all of my "guessed" expenses and income for every month. I can fast forward to 3 or 11 months out and see how much I should have in the bank at that time--I can input how much I think a vacation might cost me in 3 months and see how much I need to save...etc.

I can't seem to have that happen with most commercial programs. They seem to be all about the bill pay--which I already do with my browser--and other features that are useful but not essential.

I did see a blurb about account forecasting that makes me hopeful for MoneyDance..still downloading =)

GPL:CheckBook Tracker beat them by a week !!!!

[mAriuZ]

tony.maro.net
Have you ever wished there were a more functional FREE (as in GPL) personal finance program available for Linux? I know I always said there were two things keeping me from dumping Windows entirely

#1 A good Pascal development environment
#2 A financial management package that does scheduled payments and balance forecasts

# Import / Export QIF files (I imported all my old Microsoft Money 2002 data)
# Balances account
# Import OFX file for automatic balancing (online banking!)
# Balance history graph
# Sort by date or transaction number
# Category spending piechart
# Supports split transactions
# Prints checks
# Autocomplete
# Scheduled bill pay
# Balance forecasts
# Balance forecast graph
# Autofill entire transaction based on previous
# Has sound
# No required libraries (other than GTK+)
# It's SMALL! About 2 MB!
# It's fast! Informal tests shows 10 times faster than MS Money with same data!
# Compresses data - a years worth of data takes up about 31k (same data in MS Money takes 3.6 MB)
# It's usable - I'm using it myself now...

Re:What if you do not use KDE?

[vocaro]

My problem is that, maybe they should call it gnomecash.

It's their software and they're giving it to you for free. They can call it whatever the heck they want.

Or make it dependent on libraries that I am going to have installed on any given Linux install.

All of the Linux distributions I'm aware of include the GNOME libs.

I do not want to have to clutter my hard drive with Gnome crap.

Like I was saying, it goes both ways. A GNOME user might prefer GNOME over KDE, and in that case the KDE libs would be excess "crap", as you say. But I don't understand how you can call GNOME libs crap just because you prefer KDE. I mean, even if they're inferior to KDE, they can't be crap if they're needed to run the software you want to run. What if gnucash only required the GTK+ libs? From what you're saying, GTK+ would still be "crap".

And the apps you mention are not windows manager specific.

Neither is gnucash. When you run it, the window will be managed by whatever window manager you've got running, whether that's KWin or whatever else.

I am running Java AND Mozilla on a KDE/Fluxbox system and I DIDN'T have to install any Gnome libs to do it.

No, but you DID have to install a huge Java runtime and several megabytes of extra libs required only for Mozilla. Why are those libs perfectly fine, but GNOME libs aren't? I'm just not understanding your point at all. You seem to think that because you don't like the GNOME desktop, then anything that is in any way associated with GNOME libs is crap. Fine, then just don't use GNOME software, or make your own version of gnucash that requires Qt and the KDE. Then all those GNOME users can complain that your free software is crap because it depends on a few extra libs.

This announcement is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

CheckBook Tracker for Linux had online banking almost a week before Moneydance, and it's FREE as in GPL.

You can check the release dates and changelog on Freshmeat to confirm the dates...

HOWTO: install gnucash on OSX using fink

[sethdelackner]

This was really painful, so I document for you all exactly how to do it. In fact, I did, as step one after the first sign of problems, reinstall fink from the current installer after moving away your existing /sw.

The rest:

1. Do all the following via sudo (or as root if you are feeling lucky)
____________________
Install these binary packages using "apt-get install packagename"

For the following three you have to choose which one, I picked the left option:
giflib OR libungif
gnome-vfs-ssl-dev OR gnome-vfs-dev
python22-shlibs OR python22-nox-shlibs

gtkhtml guile libghttp libglade popt date-manip-pm dlcompat-dev guile-dev bonobo-dev control-center-dev db3 docbook-dsssl-nwalsh docbook-dtd expat expat-shlibs gal19 gconf-dev gdbm gdbm-shlibs gmp gmp-shlibs gnome-core gnome-core-dev gnome-core-shlibs gnome-libs-dev gnome-print-dev gnumeric gtk-doc gtkhtml-dev intltool libjpeg libole2 libole2-shlibs libpng3 libpng3-shlibs libpoll libpoll-shlibs libtiff libxml2 libxml2-bin libxml2-shlibs libxslt libxslt-shlibs netpbm oaf-dev openjade openssl-dev openssl-shlibs pkgconfig python sgml-entities-iso8879 tcltk tcltk-dev tcltk-shlibs digest-md5-pm html-parser-pm compress-zlib-pm html-tagset-pm libnet-pm libwww-pm mime-base64-pm uri-pm autoconf25 daemonic fileutils gawk libpng libtool14 libtool14-shlibs m4

For some stupid reason, you have to have a TeX implementation, either system or fink installed. I just did "apt-get install ghostscript" and followed the prompts, picking the defaults.

____________________
The following packages are not in stable, so you have to hand copy their .info and .patch files from the dists/unstable to dists/local tree. Use 'fink install packagename'

slib
html-tableextract-pm
finance-quote-pm
fi nance-quotehist-pm
g-wrap
guppi16
openhbci
lib gnugetopt
postgresql*
libofx
gnucash (but first read the following section)

____________________
The gnucash .info file needs to be edited. Any line with '' on it, must have no trailing spaces.

Finally, gnucash wants to update from source many additional packages:
$ fink install gnucash

this will install also all these from source:
control-center-dev control-center-shlibs docbook-dtd doxygen g-wrap g-wrap-dev g-wrap-shlibs gal19 gal19-shlibs gal21 gal21-shlibs gnome-core-dev gnome-core-shlibs gnome-libs-dev gnome-libs-shlibs gnome-vfs-shlibs gnome-vfs-ssl-dev graphviz gtkhtml-dev gtkhtml-shlibs guppi16-dev guppi16-shlibs imlib imlib-shlibs libgnugetopt libgnugetopt-shlibs libofx libofx-shlibs libpng3 openhbci openhbci-shlibs opensp3 opensp3-shlibs openssl097-dev openssl097-shlibs orbit orbit-dev orbit-shlibs postgresql73 postgresql73-dev postgresql73-shlibs scrollkeeper

Last Post!

[alpg]

If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever
to get a "fix" of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude
that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine.
-- Rob Stampfli

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...