As to the desktop app business; well sure but my hope is we build to this sort of thing. No harm is starting somewhere!
Which is precisely why it is bad?!
> GDPR is business to consumer and we should critique it to press for digital solutions that are meaningful for consumers.
No, GDPR simply does not have anything to do with this. GDPR is about human rights, not about technological development. Machine readable access might still be a worthwhile goal in that area, but extending data protection to encompass the right to submit transactions to your bank via a machine readable standardized interface certainly would be a stretch.
> As to the desktop app business; well sure but my hope is we build to this sort of thing. No harm is starting somewhere!
But are we starting anywhere? Say I want to write free banking software for people who care about their privacy ... are we even the slightest bit closer to being able to do that? Or isn't this rather a step in the opposite direction in that it further cements the idea of having monks do all the reading and writing for your?
Sounds like your issue boils down to whether this is done with SaaS vs local app
Though, mind you that "local app" is not the only way to run software. I could also install software on my home server to, I dunno, send me XMPP messages for incoming transactions, dunno whether you would call that a "local app"?
Erm ... WTF?! I'm not sure how explain this as it just seems so obvious, but ... you can, like, use software that other people write on your own computer!? There is no need to have any clue whatsoever of software development nor to share your data with any third party in order to profit from open APIs.
People can use Thunderbird to read and write email without any need to be able to write software because there are open POP3, IMAP, and SMTP specs and you can have POP3, IMAP, and SMTP credentials for your email provider ... how is that meaningless to the vast majority of people?!
> I think we should be encouraging!
Encouraging of what? More centralization of data processing? Less control for the consumer?
> FWIW GDPR is more interesting legislation for what your after
Not at all. That is about data protection, not about machine readable interfaces. First of all, being able to access my data does not in any way allow me to initiate transactions, which is a ciritical part of banking functionality. But also, being able to access data does not at all mean being able to process it using a computer. I can have access to all the data companies store about me now, and most of them will simply send a letter with a printout to fulfill their legal obligations.