[kmymoney] [Bug 469431] Need better way to handle changes in stock price quote source

[jesse]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=469431

jesse <jvapr27 at yahoo.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Resolution|DOWNSTREAM                  |FIXED

--- Comment #43 from jesse <jvapr27 at yahoo.com> ---
As a fellow user for almost a decade now, I do not consider this software as
you described. 
"kmm is not for the masses, it is an experimental tool with no visible
development, non existent documentation and "mail lists".

As far as I can tell the software is of high quality - the reason I came to
this platform from the others you mentioned. Everyone is always open to use
whatever software fits their needs though. Free or paid options are available.
The paid options come with some form of guarantee or Service Level Agreements
so you can base your expectations. 

This software is developed by volunteers, it is provided free of charge.
Developers from all over the world contribute, as they have time, to its
support. They are all friendly, great developers and very supportive. From what
I can tell, anyone is welcomed to use it. It has served many of users for many
years(like me) and I have looked at the competitors. I have tried, most of,
them and still continue to prefer this software. 

I believe there are two things we should consider:
1. The way that the portfolio handles the issue, is behind the scenes in the
code itself, which is why you feel you did not have to do anything as a user.
They fixed it and you upgraded at some point in time. With this approach you
rely on the developers to 'fix' the issue. Luckily, somehow they must have
noticed the issue and fixed it. I am not sure what the update cadence is for
that software. I am not a developer but from what I've heard in mailing list
and chats, the KMyMoney software is undergoing a major update. This may have
caused KMyMoney updates to be further apart than usual. 

2. As stated before, KMyMoney at least gives you the option to fix the issue
yourself. It is in fact more flexible than the portfolio tool. As a user, you
can modify how the quote is retrieved and when a volunteer developer finds
time, they can update the code and make the fix available out of the box. 

I will agree that as users, many times we just want it done for us. I also do
not like spending hours trying to research how to change the parser to make it
work. This also leads to many google searches and testing of many different
suggestions from people on the internet. I also think that maybe, as a way to
mitigate some of this, it would be helpful if there was a page where official
documentation could be kept with the most up-to-date community known method to
retrieve the quotes. In my experience, other software offers this type of
documentation but, it does get out of date. Anyone who finds a solution would
need to go there to update and share with the community. 

Thus I see KMyMoney as providing two advantages: 
1. the user community is able to update the command to retrieve the text
themselves, no need to wait for developers. 
2. the user community can wait until a new version is released that includes
the fix as a default. 

To me this is very impressive to have such flexibility. 

It does not mean frustrations will not occur when it breaks. As a user, if I
expect the software to 'fix' it for me, then I will just need to wait for a
solution to be provided in the form of the code,( and hopefully the software is
not undergoing major changes that may delay the release of new version at the
time). 

For reference it appears that this is the bug report for portfolio app for when
the yahoo API(html scrapper) broke for them:
https://github.com/portfolio-performance/portfolio/issues/3302

This was the comments in their issue log: 
"Something between. Yahoo’s data providers could for instance temporarily stop
the delivery , Yahoo could adjust their API interface or implement a new
technology to prevent content grabbing. On the other hand, you get what you
paid for :wink:" --
https://forum.portfolio-performance.info/t/price-incorrect-in-statement-of-assets/23806/3

I think this shows that both software are: 
- pulling the data from the same place, in the same way(html scraping).
KMyMoney offers two ways for it to be fixed. 
- experience the same issue. Just because you did not experience the issue
yourself, does not mean the issue did not occur with that software. They were
able to push the fix in rapidly but it still happened. 
- Both software are susceptible to Yahoo changing the website breaking their
application.

 Thus, I do not agree with the statement you made. The quality and abilities of
the tools are on par if not KMyMoney provides a more flexible solution allowing
users to fix the issue even between releases. 

I am not sure how fast Portfolio-Performance responded to the issue, but they
were definitely able to push the fix in to the app download package sooner. 

I am glad though that this post came up. It is the way open source software
gets better. 

There are many options out there but KMyMoney is my preference. The quotes is
probably the most fragile part of it due to the dependencies on external web
pages.

I personally enjoy recommending and helping new users onboard to KMyMoney.

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