You’re right that FDX locks out Free software. You’re wrong in thinking that that’s in any way unintentional or that anyone in the big tech or banking industries thinks that there should be any impediment to them selling your personal data to whomever they want, including you. Heck, they even had to be forced by laws to properly secure that data. It’s magical thinking to believe that lobbying their industry organizations will cause them to change that position, and politically it’s only the fringes in Congress (Sanders and Warren come to mind) who’d consider legislating it.
Regards, John Ralls > On Sep 28, 2024, at 03:11, Doherty, Daniel <d...@ddoherty.net> wrote: > > Right, John, ofxhome.com <http://ofxhome.com/>. I was able to use this: > 'https://www.ofxhome.com:443/api.php?dump=yes > <https://www.ofxhome.com/api.php?dump=yes>' to get a full site dump, which, > for the institutions I have been interacting with, worked quite well and my > program was able to fetch transactions from places like fidelity, etrade, > commerce bank na, and a couple of credit cards without a hitch. I run a cron > job that fetches transactions every week or so just to make sure I don't miss > anything. > > They still mostly work and, FDX notwithstanding, I expect that banks will > keep them working for the foreseeable future. But who knows? > > I think making a user find, and then manually type in a complicated url is > very off-putting and it is an important feature to make this as automatic as > possible. > > As for FDX, I would like to make my software work with it as well, but my > preliminary review of the materials indicates a few problems: > > 1. FDX assumes that the person interested in downloading the financial data > is some large third-party data vendor that can negotiate relationships with > banks on a one-at-a-time basis. It seems to make no provision for the owner > of the data to download his own data through its API mechanism. If I am > understanding it correctly, this seems to me a glaring oversight. Quicken > can accommodate its customers by acting as the third-party data provider for > its customers, but then they hold your data. It does not seem to have > occurred to FDX that an end-user may want to access his own data! > > 2. For the several institutions I have looked at, there is little or no > information about how to go about getting FDX access on their websites. The > assume that you will interface with the third-party data provider and they > will negotiate the relationship with the bank. > > 3. For GNUCash, more so than my own software, I think this should be a major > issue. They are essentially freezing out personal financial software from > operating with banks and brokers, again, if I am understanding it correctly. > If so, GNUCash should object loudly. > > Is anyone at GNUCash petitioning FDX to advocate for access by bank customers > to their own data? I hope so, and if not, I hope you will. > > I am just an amateur piker, but this accounting software has been my hobby > project for over 10 years, and I would like to make it useful to others in > the near future. > > Anyway, thanks for listening to my rant. Just wanted to see what developers > of GNUCash thought about these issues. > > Cheers John and Jesse, > > > ==================================================== > Daniel E. Doherty > d...@ddoherty.net <mailto:d...@ddoherty.net>
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