QBXML import

[Andrew Moise]

  Hi John.
  I don't agree with you about the legal issues; simply reading a file
format is totally different from duplicating a full language API, and
reverse engineering is perfectly legal within certain boundaries. Notably,
reverse engineering for interoperability is absolutely legal (as long as
you don't do something otherwise objectionable while you're doing it). Any
proprietary software vendor would generally prefer that competing software
not be able to read their file formats, but that doesn't mean it's legally
prohibited. Some court cases showing legal and illegal examples of reverse
engineering are here:

https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/reverse-engineering-faq#faq6

  Of course it's not for me to say what legal risk you're willing to expose
yourself to. I can understand the point of view of not wanting to entangle
a good project into something which could have negative repercussions for
it. Has Intuit shown some kind of indication of wanting to pursue legal
action against people who try to read their data format?
  I do have some data in QBXML format that I'd like to get into Gnucash. I
might do the stylesheet or some similar work to get my particular data into
a useful format for me.
  Thanks for your work on Gnucash and the quick response.
  -Andrew

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 11:29 PM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

>
> 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> wrote:
>
>>
>> > On Mar 17, 2016, at 3:42 PM, Andrew Moise <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
>