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Java Specification Request on Community Currencies
bernfast writes "I've submitted a Java Specification Request on complementary currencies to the Java Community Process. This specification will allow to implement arbitrary units of exchange as Java currencies. Examples are timedollars and other community currencies.
This JSR is still in need of an expert group and will probably not receive too much industry suppport, so any help from the open source community is welcome."
Why is this being made a java-specific thing? I would much rather see this generalized. Making it language-specific limits its use, especially in the industry... as much as most of us hate MS, we have to admit that being able to use something in C# as well as other languages is a big selling point.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
or does anyone else find it funny that a slashdot comment is linked to in a JSR?
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
No offense, but why is this interesting. A JSR being submitted is no big deal and this is not exactly earth shattering stuff.
Who will set the exchange rates for those community currencies that aren't tied to a measure of time or to the US dollar?
I hope you guys know you're supposed to declare the value of barter and in-kind services as income and pay taxes on it.
If these types of things get popular, the IRS will find you.
Doesn't seem like a spec, a process or anything you would package or get certified. Just sounds like someones idea?
How about you signup at http://www.sourceforge.net and launch your program there and use the available j2ee protocols to design your application?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "And it would help if there was native Java support for the most popular computing platforms" There is of course the JRE runtime which runs on just about any platform, and there are compilers available if you want to complie all the way down to native.
Get your history straight. Java IS a standard. Sun sued M$ to try to force them to make their Java implementation follow the Java standard rather than containing M$-specific changes. When all was said and done, M$ threw a tantrum and removed Java rather than complying with the standard.
Java IS available on all popular computing platforms -- including Windows, even if it not a crippled "native" M$ implementation.
A useful, standardized tool can develope if you simply write the library/class/whatever that is needed, make it very good, and then everyone starts using it. Standardization processes work best when they just rubber-stamp what everyone is doing anyway. Submit the JSR or whatever about the time you have a bureaucratic boss or client who wants something standardized before they will let you use it.
I bet you 10 simolarians that this won't work.
man i need to explain that that egg thing was part of an ad and yes *looks embarrassed*
This sounds a lot like the Local Exchange Trading System, which has been around for a while. It allows communities to engage in economic activities without official currency if there is none available.
you really are new aren't you?
Okay, don't mean to sound like a dick, but what is this stuff and what does it have to do with Java?
I'm a consultant and one hour of my time is worth a hell of a lot more than 1 dollar, at least to some people. What is all this?
And again, what on EARTH does it have to do with java??
I didn't know JSR's were so high-level. Should I submit a JSR for my favorite application then? Hey, I need to finish this bond trading app, maybe somebody will just add it all to java!
No wonder java is so bloated!
Somebody please give the executive summary of all this in pure economic and programming terms, leave out the fluff about "rebuilding inner cities" and "enhancing communities".
Why is the poster doing this as a JSR? They are requests for Java specifications. Things that go into the core of the Java platform.
The problem domain for this proposed JSR is primarily in the business world, not the technical one. I can't see any one proposal getting sufficient backing from a wide enough user group. Certainly not enough for everyone to agree on a useful technical implementation of this.
There are better ways to handle this...
I suggest that the poster goes and sets up his own web service to do this (banks and investment firms offer such services already). And work out an open API.
It's good you've found a problem that interests you. But please don't feel you need to go and clutter up my platform of choice to go solving it.
--
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The only problem is, it is written in C so you may not like it. ;)
Seastead this.
Argh.. people who tries to come up with a new 'independent monetary system' seems to not understand two things. 1) Time is money 2) The existing banking system.
They are essentially trying to create a miniature banking system (within a community)by hoping people's time is worth zero. There is a reason why we now have bank notes, checks, credit cards, bankers, notaries, etc.
What is is backed by? Your and mine spare time?
/. (with as wide a range of strange ideas as we constantly deal with), one might want to provide a one-sentence intoduction to what he is talking about.
Is not it a kind of a socialist (and further left) response to the Liberty Dollars?
Let's see, every time me and my wife spend a nice hour in bed we write a Time Dollar IOU to each other for services provided... HUH???
Paul B.
P.S. Yes, I did RTFA, but I guess even on
After initial enthusiasm by foundations, funding for Time Dollar Exchanges dried up in the mid 1990's, and a period of struggle to keep afloat followed.
;-)
Anyone finds this passage from the History section of the timedollars site a little bit, hmm, _strange_? Were not the proponents supposed to be paid in TIME dollars?
Paul B.
... but then, again, #1 reason in your .signature's link directly contradicts the link in my .signature!
;-)
Which only proves that people sometimes can be reasoned with!
Paul B.
C# has a lot of marketing dollars behind it but it just isn't getting used very much. Go look on any jobs site and compare the number of C# jobs vs. Java jobs. Or check tiobe to see how popular C# is on the web. Even Mono hasn't managed to make C# very popular on the open source front. Check out freshmeat and see how many projects are using C#. This lack of popularity can no longer be attributed to the newness of the language, it has been around for over 4 years now. I suspect MS will be coming out with something to replace it soon.
Instead Sun choose to sue Microsoft to get them to remove Java from their OS.
Pure fud. What? You can't run Java on Windows? What bullshit. What Sun sued MS over was the buggy, non-Java version of the VM they were passing off as Java, in hopes of giving the language a bad name. Looks like they at least foole you.
Have you LOOKED at what language pretty much every major corporation (but one) is asking for from their developers?
Check Sun's website. Java(TM) runs on 5 (five) [1] platforms. There are a few ports from third parties that add about 5 more platforms.
NetBSD, for example, runs on 40 platforms. It's written in C, though. gcc runs on a few hundred of platforms, I guess. It's written in C, though.
Programs that run almost anywhere exist. They are written in C, though.
[1] ia32-linux (selected distributions only), ia32-win32, ia32-winnt, sparc-solaris, ia32-solaris.
What Java really needs to be taken seriously is a standard!
Who is not taking Java seriously? It's by far the most in-demand language in the IT industry.
And it would help if there was native Java support for the most popular computing platforms.
Why? The point of java is that it is not native. Its up to the VM implementor to handle the native code translation.
Instead Sun choose to sue Microsoft to get them to remove Java from their OS.
No. Sun sued Microsoft to get them to either remove or fix Microsoft's Java, which deliberately omitted parts of standard Java (such as RMI) and by default encouraged developers to produce Windows-only applications.
Decent Java is widespread on Windows as companies like Dell pre-install Sun's JRE.
....Liberty Dollars are in much more widespread use than any of the time based currencies I saw in the list and are backed by precious metals, a globally recognized form of money and exchange that is *quite spiffy* in it's longevity and robustness. I remember one community based currency from the 70s called the "constant", but even that used minted silver coin as a local currency and it's the genesis of where I got my Top 100 commodities based currency idea from.
I agree with you, I simply don't see this need to specifically code using Java to come up with some currency. Money as an historical successful currency has traditionally been based on already produced tangible wealth,so making it (these time based currencies) based on future promises of work (IOU's where no work has been performed yet, and might not be) is a lot closer to the flawed and highly exploitative fiat artifical currency system we use now, which is bogus if you ask me.
See for example Margrit Kennedy's 140-page book Interest and Inflation free Money - you'll never look at money the same way again after reading the first chapter.
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Sorry, in the above example code, please substitute the class name "Currency" with "CurrencyValue" or something like it. I didn't mean java.util.Currency as it currently stands. Possibly "Money" or "MonetaryValue" could also be reasonable names for such a value holder object.
i - This sig provided by
I have a niche idea that doesn't really belong in the core API, but maybe if I post it on slashdot people will care!
Awesome idea, could provide significant benefits ... but unfortunately written in Java.
This sort of thing would be incredibly interesting if it were done in C or something else least-common-denominator that can be used in any piece of software.
May we never see th
There is a more general proposal alreay out there:
... units package supports programatic unit handling via an abstract Unit class, run-time checking and conversion, unit arithmetic, unit parsing and formatting, and a units database.
http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=108
108 Units Specification
The
and I'm working on a JSR submission to tackle World Hunger.
Bernard Lietaer and many other experts on the topic have a very firm understanding of the inherent errors of our modern worldwide economy and have repeatedly pointed out that the system is unstable.
As a computer programmer my reply to inherent instability I'm unable to fix on short notice is to keep a backup system available and prepare for failover.
Of course this was a simplification, it's not really a failover, it's more like load ballancing: You keep alternate economies running and leave it to the users to select their system of choice. If the big one fails we can run on the spare tire for a while, while we design a better primary economy, or until we decide the spare tire is actually the better choice.
I think nobody here is going to reject the idea to keep backup systems in case of failure?
Personal Java has reached end of life. It would be wise to change the references to J2ME CDC/Foundation to gain any credibility with this JSR.
The JSR is a specification for an addition and a modification to the Java language. Of course you can add a java library to the system which replaces java.util.Currency but that would certainly cause a lot of problems. I much prefer to let Sun know we need a more complex 'Currency' class with CurrencyProviders, CurrencyRegistries and CurrencyDescriptions and have that system as a part of the core language, or, at least, the required modification of java.util.Currency and the rest of it as part of a JSR package (e.g.: javax.trade.cc)
It is only fair for slashdot to link my story if I link to their site, isn't it?
The reference implementation to that specification might use XML, web services, encrypted XML and even try to use all this in a cross-platform kind of way, which even seems impossible to avoid, once XML is in the game.
If you want to see a reference implementation (RI) in other languages than Java I'll be glad to help in any way possible but I'm very much Java-centric these days. You never forget to program in C, at least as a Java programmer you don't, but my C++ is just C with classes in it and I don't use any other programming language anymore.
If the web service interface of the RI can be used to automatically generate stubs for other languages I'll be happy to provide these.
The sole modification of java.util.Currency, if it is what the expert group decides on, may be a perfectly reasonable outcome of this JSR. Small is beautiful. If there's no need to change more than a single class then don't, I can agree with that.
Of course, the reference implementation (RI) will aim to be compatible with GCC/GCJ.
1. An hour is always an hour, regardless of what is offered
2. They are backed only by a moral obligation and are not legally binding
3. Their purpose is charitable.
http://www.timedollar.org/td_irs_rulings.htm
This is a proposal to specify alternate units of exchange as part of the Java language and to use the class java.util.Currency as the unit of exchange, as one might expect to do. A complementary currency could be any unit of exchange you can think of, not necessarily an hour. Another unit of exchange would be, for example, the terra: A currency based on a basket of commodities. Yet another currency could be e-Gold or any of the local currencies circulated in the USA today: http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/cur_grps.html
The web service descriptions will probably be sufficient to reimplement protocols by just running stub generators.
I like your idea of a 100% economy. The idea to know you have 100% of your share is nice but I can't imagine a way to calculate the buying power in a %-economy. How many %% is a bag of potatoes? Is that true of all bags of the same weight? Are all potatoes equal?
Religion in a nutshell is: god is trying to teach us our own set of ethics. We've to invent them as we go along and separate the good from the bad, just as Buddha has tought his pupils.
We're bad pupils because even if we come up with some ethics we ignore them and forget about them only a generation later. That's really poor.
One of the more important subtopic of ethics today would be environmental ethics.