Hi Gbolahan,
I hope to get to meet you in person someday. To be clear, the Mifos
internal team is VERY interested in having a mobile phone interface to
banking operations in the Mifos system. Like everyone in this community, we
have lots of big dreams, but only limited time and resources to pursue them
all.
Our belief is that after v1.1 is successfully launched, we, the internal
team of developers, need to concentrate our efforts on improving the
underlying architecture of the product and community backbone to facilitate
this type of project and many more like it in the future. So, it would be a
great step forward for the Mifos vision to see a community-driven Mifos
Mobile concept take flight, and turn into ideas that eventually make it into
the Mifos product.
Here is how I suggest we move forward.
* We at the Grameen Technology Center would encourage and support you,
Gbolahan Oshonubi, to be the project leader for the initial phases of Mifos
Mobile.
* The project leader should reach out to all the people in the community who
have expressed interest in contributing to this project, and coordinate with
them on goals.
* If there is enough overlap in shared goals, the project leader should seek
commitments from those interested and define the goals of the collaborative
project.
* The project leader should set up a way for the project team to
communicate. I would strongly recommend that you use the existing Mifos
community tools, which will improve over time: http://mifos.org, irc
://freenode/#mifos, these mailing lists, the Mifos issue tracker, etc.
* The project team should work together to define the statement of success
for reaching the goals of the project. I would humbly propose a few, but
the project team may well find better ones:
- the usefulness of a mifos.org project page for Mifos Mobile
- agreement on customer/user requirements for a first version of this
mobile interface
- a working proof of concept of at least one mobile operation in Mifos
* I would also encourage you to follow the principles of open source:
Liberty, Openness, Transparency, Deliver Early and Often, Community,
* You may even be able to obtain funding for the project from interested
investors, that is really not my area of expertise so I cannot help you with
that.
I will be happy to watch as this project grows and flourishes, as I am sure
many people on these lists will be, but will only be able to offer
occasional advise if asked.
thanks and best wishes,
Sam
On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Gbolahan Oshonubi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Hi Sam,
>
> Really, it is a good thing to see it that way. It is highly expected that
> to reduce the cost of penetration and operation in MF operations, the role
> of mobile banking is really great. Having seen what was done with Grameen
> Village Phone on one side and G Cash on the other side, it will be a good
> thing to follow this steps. While the MIFOS internal team may not be
> interested in the Mifos Mobile concept, I think the community can take a
> step to it. If you know the starting point, kindly point us to it. For
> others who may be interested, we may need to put in more efforts behind the
> scene.
>
> Kindly let us see how we can kick off.
>
> Thank you,
> Gbolahan Oshonubi
> Intelligent Network Services Ltd
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Mobile +234-8023175974
> Remain blessed
>
> Disclaimer This e-mail (and any attachment) is intended only for the
> attention of the addressee(s). Its unauthorised use, disclosure, storage or
> copying is not permitted. If you are not the intended recipient, please
> destroy all copies and inform the sender by return e-mail. Internet e-mail
> is not a secure medium. Any reply to this message could be intercepted and
> read by someone else. Please bear that in mind when deciding whether to send
> material in response to this message by e-mail.
>
> ------------------------------
> *From*: "Sam Birney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> *Sent*: Monday, March 24, 2008 7:38 PM
> *To*: "Mifos functional discussions" <
> mifos-functional@lists.sourceforge.net>, Developer <
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> *Subject*: [Mifos-developer] Mifos Mobile
>
>
>
> The community input towards a mobile banking interface to Mifos keeps
> growing. There seem to be several different organizations interested in
> working on this. This would be great functionality to add to Mifos,
> although the internal team may not be able to focus on it as a feature area
> during 2008, we will be working on APIs to provide clean support and upgrade
> paths for this type of interface in the future and more.
>
> Tim Wood and Aarti Sharma, who are working on Grameen's Village Phone
> project, are also very interested in getting to a proof of concept and
> eventual full implementation of mobile banking with Mifos. I think Tim has
> done some work on defining some initial usage scenarios that he can share.
>
> In the spirit of open source, perhaps all the interested groups can
> collaborate on coming up with a functional spec, initial technical design,
> and proof of concept. I would recommend making a wiki page on mifos.orgfor
> the project.
>
> As Van mentions, one thing to note is that our current Mifos API, such as
> it is, will likely change significantly between v1.1 and the next big
> release. Our hope is that after that, we will have a stable API, and be
> able to provide a smooth upgrade path for any changes to it. Until then,
> keep in mind that the interface to Mifos APIs, or eventually Mifos web
> services layer, may need to be reworked later. But I don't think this
> should stop anyone from thinking through the scenarios and design, and even
> a first implementation.
>
> I will be interested to follow along with the development of this project,
> it sounds like an exciting step forward for Mifos.
>
> regards,
> Sam
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 9:37 AM, Van Mittal-Henkle <
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > Thanks for your interest in Mifos and for thinking about extending it
> > into areas like mobile banking.
> >
> > Currently there is no clean API as such that Mifos exposes. However,
> > after the 1.1 release of Mifos creating exactly that kind of API is on
> > our list of things to do. One of the prime motivations for creating a well
> > documented API like this would be to support integration with mobile
> > banking.
> >
> > In the coming months it is likely that there will be some significant
> > changes to the internals of Mifos as we rewrite parts of the code in order
> > to support a robust API. It would be very useful to first try to get an
> > understanding of what the requirements would be to support your mobile
> > banking application. We could then use that information to help guide our
> > efforts as we define the Mifos API for integrating with other applications.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > --Van
> >
> > ------------------------------
> > *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Gbolahan
> > Oshonubi
> > *Sent:* Friday, March 21, 2008 1:37 AM
> > *To:* mifos-functional@lists.sourceforge.net; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > *Cc:* mifos-functional@lists.sourceforge.net
> > *Subject:* Re: [Mifos-functional] Adam- P2P Cash would like to assist
> > in
> >
> > Hi Tom,
> >
> > Good to hear that. I was about to send the same message now till I saw
> > yours. For mobile banking I am interested. We need to look at the various
> > business models and to integrate it with Grameen model and MIFOS. In
> > additions, there is another solution on using EFTPOS as one of the banking
> > channels. We can get some codes and see how we can build on them. However,
> > we need to know about MIFOS API for this or betterstill how to put the
> > solutions together
> >
> > Thank you,
> > Gbolahan Oshonubi
> > Intelligent Network Services Ltd
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Mobile +234-8023175974
> > Remain blessed
> >
> > Disclaimer This e-mail (and any attachment) is intended only for the
> > attention of the addressee(s). Its unauthorised use, disclosure, storage or
> > copying is not permitted. If you are not the intended recipient, please
> > destroy all copies and inform the sender by return e-mail. Internet e-mail
> > is not a secure medium. Any reply to this message could be intercepted and
> > read by someone else. Please bear that in mind when deciding whether to send
> > material in response to this message by e-mail.
> >
> > ------------------------------
> > *From*: "Adam Monsen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > *Sent*: Thursday, March 20, 2008 5:27 PM
> > *To*: "Tom Meredith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > *Subject*: Re: [Mifos-functional] Adam- P2P Cash would like to assist in
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 9:20 AM, Tom Meredith wrote:
> > > developing a mobile banking interface to your code.
> > > How would you best suggest we start the process and is anyone else
> > > interested in assisting as well?
> >
> > Hi Tom,
> >
> > I would first suggest signing up on the mailing lists and joining the
> > IRC channel. This is the best way to keep abreast of community
> > activity with Mifos.
> >
> > There isn't a functional spec for mobile banking that I know of, so
> > you might start with your own proof-of-concept. Here's how to get
> > started with the code:
> > http://mifos.org/developers
> >
> > Looks like we've been thinking about this for a while:
> > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.finance.mifos.devel/1069
> >
> > Cheers!
> > -Adam
> >
> > --
> > Adam Monsen
> >
> >
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