QBXML import

John Ralls jralls at ceridwen.us
Thu Mar 17 23:29:44 EDT 2016


> On Mar 17, 2016, at 5:32 PM, Andrew Moise <andrew.moise at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>   Hm, interoperating with a file format certainly *shouldn't* be something Intuit can simply declare to be prohibited in open source software. If you're making use of the SDK, you would obviously have to follow whatever the terms of use of the SDK are, but just reading their data using your own code is clearly permitted by copyright law.
>   Or have I missed something? Do the Gnucash developers genuinely believe that it would be legally improper to read .qbxml format files, or are they mainly concerned about Intuit taking legal action against the project?
>   -Andrew
> 
> On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 7:07 PM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us <mailto:jralls at ceridwen.us>> wrote:
> 
> > On Mar 17, 2016, at 3:42 PM, Andrew Moise <andrew.moise at gmail.com <mailto:andrew.moise at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> >  Hi all.
> >  Does gnucash have the ability to import QBXML files? Sorry for what seems
> > like a basic question (I'm sure it's answered somewhere), but I couldn't
> > find an answer after poking around with google.
> 
> No. GnuCash can import QIF, OFX/QFX, and some CSV files.
> 
> QBXML is a proprietary component of Intuit, Inc.'s QuickBooks SDK and is subject to distribution restrictions[1] that prohibit its use in open-source software.
> 

Maybe you missed, for example, that Google and Oracle are hundreds of millions of dollars and several years into litigating whether it's a copyright or trademark violation to replicate the Java standard API. Oracle, which claims that it is a violation, won the last round a couple of months ago.

In order for someone to import an XML file without having access to the documentation for it (contained in that SDK) they would have to obtain one or more comprehensive examples and compare the data with it's presentation in Quickbooks. That's "reverse engineering" and every court case I've ever heard of has declared that to be an IP violation even without a license clause prohibiting it.

We're not lawyers and don't have legal advice for IP matters, but we know that a lawsuit would wipe us out before it even got near a courtroom. You bet we're worried about getting sued.

If you and your army of lawyers think otherwise, the GnuCash XML format is reasonably straightforward. Write an XSLT stylesheet to convert between the two and publish it yourself. 

Regards,
John Ralls


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