[GNC] OFX Home Sunset Announcement

[John Ralls]

OFX DirectConnect outside of Intuit has been pretty dicey since Microsoft killed off their Money project. The handful of non-Intuit programs (FLOSS and otherwise) that use it have never been on any bank's radar. Just try calling a bank's customer service and asking about using GnuCash, KMyMoney, or even MoneyDance to retrieve your transactions. Nobody here has ever reported getting anything besides "we only support Quicken and Quickbooks".

GnuCash isn't competing with online bill-paying services in the US. AFAIK no US bank allows that via OFX Direct Connect and even if some did we don't have the resources to reverse-engineer the protocols so that Martin could implement it. Aside from that online banking is a bit of a side job for GnuCash anyway. There are free online track-your-money services and yup, you're the product not the customer. I believe that there will always be enough people who understand that to keep GnuCash worthwhile.

Regards,
John Ralls


> On Apr 25, 2021, at 3:15 PM, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> As a user, I wonder if this is an omen of the sunset of OFX altogether outside of Intuit.  And if so, would it make more sense to look at the long term survival of GnuCash in the face of cloud based alternatives, for example.  
> 
> I personally do not want my financial data and bill paying data exposed wholesale to a cloud based bill paying service that purports to track your personal finances as a side benefit, but my bank is giving exactly that away to it's customers, and it appears that a lot of their customers are biting.  I cannot believe that earning interest on 'float' makes enough profit to pay for it and some company's bottom line.
> 
> On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 4:03 PM Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com> wrote:
> Is this something we should take over?
> 
> -derek
> 
> On Sun, April 25, 2021 3:34 pm, John Ralls wrote:
> > I happened to be on https://ofxhome.com today and noticed that the owner
> > had posted this on 28 February:
> >
> >> Beginning in August of 2021 (6 months from now) OFX Home will go read
> >> only. In February of 2022 (one year from now) I will shut down OFX Home
> >> completely.
> >> I have kept the site limping along but I haven't done any work on it in
> >> years. I think there are a lot of really cool things that could be done
> >> with it. But sadly I am not the person to do it.
> >> If you are interested in taking over the site, please read me post here:
> >> http://www.ofxhome.com/ofxforum/viewtopic.php?id=49812
> >> Thanks for reading.
> >
> > Another nail...
> >
> > Regards,
> > John Ralls
> >
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> 
> -- 
>        Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
>        derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
>        Computer and Internet Security Consultant
> 
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> David Carlson