Frequently Asked Questions

Yet another genealogical software application. Why?

Many of the most popular genealogy software programs around today are what one could call conclusion-based. The few other programs around are more or less evidence-based, but they are intended as a companion application to conclusion-based software progams.

Centurial is an attempt at creating stand-alone genealogy software that combines the benefits of evidence-based genealogy with the benefits from existing conclusion-based programs.

Can I run Centurial on a Mac?

Yes, turns out you can! There is no native version of Centurial for the Mac, but at least one user has reported that Centurial runs without any problems using Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Why is Centurial currently free software?

Centurial is an attempt at creating genealogy software that combines the benefits of evidence-based genealogy with the benefits from existing conclusion-based programs. We are not currently aware of any other genealogical sofware that tries to do the same. So Centurial is rather different from almost all other genealogical software applications.

Our first goal is academic rather than commercial: can we create such software, and do users find it to be a viable alternative to the existing genealogical programs? In short: does the concept work?

For users to be able to answer this question, Centurial needs to support more or less the same basic set of features as most other genealogy programs. We are perfectly aware that Centurial does not yet support that basic set. We expect to reach this level of support somewhere in the next 6 months (somewhere before July of 2018).

At least until that time Centurial will be free software.

Will Centurial remain free software?

In the best case scenario Centurial will, for many users, turn out to be a viable and even prefered evidence-based alternative to the existing software programs. In that case it would be great if we could spend even more time improving and expanding the abilities of Centurial.

In order to be able to do so we might by that time consider starting to ask a (probably small) fee.

When are you going to add feature X?

Please refer to the roadmap for an overview of the planned features for the next 6 months or so.