A de facto standard is where you create something that meets with wide ranging acceptance. For many companies it's a coveted if unstated objective. For example, Adobe PDF has become a standard for viewing documents - make something available in a PDF form and most anybody can access it.
The folks at Intuit, makers of the checkbook software Quicken, had that going for them with their QIF format. Basically it was a way to export and import information into your electronic checkbook. It was pretty simple and worked very well - so well in fact that many financial institutions began to offer their customers the ability to download their account data in this format. So well that Microsoft made it available in their own checkbook program. It was a de facto standard for importing or exporting checkbook transactions.
So imagine my surprise when I bit the bullet and did a Quicken upgrade a few months ago only to discover that QIF was no longer supported by the folks at Intuit. They have elected to support only the OFX (Open Financial Exchange) standard. While a more broad and useful method for exchanging financial it is also more complex - and as a result most financial institutions are not about to expend money to implement this new standard. Perhaps even more amazing is that Microsoft Money continues to support QIF as well as OFX, even in their "bare bones" product (which I'm running a trial version of now - and like so far as I really do not need a ton of bells and whistles).
Anyone want to buy a used copy of Quicken?
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