GnuCash mobile

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Steve <butterandsalt at gmail.com> writes:

> Personally, I'd be willing to pay $100+ per year for the app.  I don't expect
> it to be free, I'm thrilled that for the past number of years since leaving
> Quicken, that I have a program that "works".  To have that information
> available to me wherever I am?  Hard to put a price on it.  Hard for me to
> imagine that if one is able to translate the current program to a mobile
> app, that it would not get wide adoption with whatever reasonable monthly
> charge.
>
> I'm just saying that with each passing day, having a program that is
> anchored to a desktop or laptop computer, makes increasingly less sense. 
> Perhaps progress is being made behind the scenes, I sure hope so.

The issue at hand is that:

1) Building such an app would require time.  It may be possible to
   leverage the existing GnuCash for Android app, but it would require a
   lot of extra work to handle real-time data syncronization.  Also,
   users would probably need/want an iOS version too.

2) We'd need to run a service that would enable data sharing between
   the app and your desktop.  The easiest way to do this would be a
   hosted service that hosts your data wholesale.  Another option would
   be to enable you to run your own server, but I suspect MOST users
   would not have the resources or skills to do that.

3) Before we could get any of this done, we'd need to complete the C++
   rewrite of the main code which would enable porting to the other
   platforms.

In short -- doing this would be a lot of work, it it would require a lot
of moving parts to come together.  While I think it's a reasonable long
term goal, I don't see it happening in the next year or three without
some major influx of resources.

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available