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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."

8 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. 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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  3. 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?

  4. 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.

  5. 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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  6. 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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  7. 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.