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Java Specification Request on Community Currencies

Posted by Hemos on from the come-and-help-out dept.

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."

24 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Why by cbrocious · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    1. Re:Why by attonitus · · Score: 5, Interesting
      By all means develop this kind of stuff as a stand alone library (although, as the previous poster suggested, it should be based on a language independent standard to be of any real use) but putting it in the Java spec is like mandating that every car in North America should come with a spare set of snow tyres.

      Snow tyres are very useful if you live in Quebec, but an unnecessary pain in the arse to have to store if you never leave Florida. In general, Quebecers are pretty good at heading down to Canadian Tyre when the white stuff starts settling in for the winter. Java developers can similarly be expected to know what they need in their classpaths.

    2. Re:Why by Gentlewhisper · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think that's because the request is submitted to the java communities responsible for java specifications?

      If java would do it, it will probably become adapted by other languages too.

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    3. Re:Why by RPoet · · Score: 2, Informative

      If developed for Java, you could easily use it from C# with IKVM.

      --
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  2. is it just me by dollargonzo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    or does anyone else find it funny that a slashdot comment is linked to in a JSR?

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    BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
    1. Re:is it just me by DAldredge · · Score: 3, Funny

      And that is a very good reason why this JSR should be nuked from orbit.

  3. Why do we care? by brw215 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No offense, but why is this interesting. A JSR being submitted is no big deal and this is not exactly earth shattering stuff.

  4. Exchange rates? by kinrowan · · Score: 5, Funny

    Who will set the exchange rates for those community currencies that aren't tied to a measure of time or to the US dollar?

  5. Barter and alternate currencies by Kohath · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Barter and alternate currencies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mostly true.

      If you have a currency that is bought and sold, in the US, it must be pegged against the US dollar, and it must be reported as income.

      However, if your currency is strictly tied to time (something like "1 fanastibuck = 10 minutes"), and you prohobit trading for money, then you do not have to pay taxes on it.

      (If I understand correctly.)

      Most serious groups doing this stuff know about the rules, and abide by them.

  6. What ?is? this? by cybrthng · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

  7. Re:In need of an "Expert Group"? by brw215 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  8. I bet you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I bet you 10 simolarians that this won't work.

  9. LETS by Anonymous+Writer · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  10. Go Wite an App, Not a JSR by rimu+guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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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  11. dBarter by Baldrson · · Score: 5, Interesting
    You might want to look at Dan Brumleve's dBarter. It's a P2P barter system where anyone can "mint" promises from their own bank and exchange them between banks with hard (RSA) encryption. It won most promising new technology at the 1999 Hackers Conference in Santa Rosa. Things went rather haywire what with the dotcon crash and Dan took off back to the midwest for to find work with his family business and left it lying around.

    The only problem is, it is written in C so you may not like it. ;)

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  12. These people don't understand... by DraconPern · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:These people don't understand... by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 3, Insightful
      They are essentially trying to create a miniature banking system (within a community)

      Not trying - doing. Some of these systems have been working for over a decade.

      by hoping people's time is worth zero.

      Uh, no. Just the opposite, in fact, it's recognizing value that is currently undercounted.

      There is a reason why we now have bank notes, checks, credit cards, bankers, notaries, etc.

      Yes: because it suits the bankers, allowing them to parasitically accumulate wealth.

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    2. Re:These people don't understand... by dkf · · Score: 2, Interesting

      FWIW, many large organizations use fake monetary units in their accounting systems, often because the conversion rate to real currencies depends on factors that are not easy to control.

      For example, supposing you buy (for a fixed price) a share of the total compute time on a supercomputer. How many minutes of CPU time is that a month? Well, that really depends on how much unscheduled down-time there is (ideally none, but this is the Real World here) and you won't know how much that is until the end of the month, and hence you won't know (for reselling purposes) how much each of those minutes of CPU time actually cost you. The easiest way to do that is to charge CPU minutes in a fake currency and reconcile that to real money every so often. You could try monetarizing up front, but that's very tricky to get right and likely to end up with either your customers cross for overcharging or your management furious for undercharging...

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  13. Re:In need of an "Expert Group"? by Decaff · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  14. interesting monetary reform site by vinsci · · Score: 2, Interesting
    A number of related books and articles, many with their full text online are available at: http://geldreform.de/ in several languages.

    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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  15. Translation by dark404 · · Score: 2

    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!

  16. Summary by 0x0d0a · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

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    May we never see th
  17. Already tried... this is an instance of JSR 108 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There is a more general proposal alreay out there:

    http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=108

    108 Units Specification

    The ... 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.