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Java Specification Request on Community Currencies 112

Posted by Hemos 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."
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Java Specification Request on Community Currencies More

Java Specification Request on Community Currencies

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  • Why (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cbrocious ( 764766 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:48PM (#10166337) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:Why (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Writer ( 746272 )

      Why is this being made a java-specific thing? I would much rather see this generalized.

      Couldn't this be implemented in XML? Except for the encryption, that is.

      • What's stopping you from encrypting XML?

        • Re:Why (Score:2)

          by Tim C ( 15259 )
          Nothing of course, but I suspect that he meant that you couldn't implement the encryption using xml, not that you couldn't encrypt the xml.
      • It's difficult to generalize this because the part you would like to see generalized is left as an implementation detail. The JSR will concentrate on offering a core specification that will aid in the implementation of arbitrary protocols, XML or not, and arbitrary complementary currency schemes. One of the major modifications to the Java language will hopefully enter the core language standard:

        The class java.util.Currency will have to be extended to support non-ISO currencies. This is strictly Java speci

        • I was just thinking of whatever part of the project can be done in XML shoud, so you don't end up isolating yourself to one proprietary language, especially if the project is released under the GPL. Others could re-write it in other programming languages and have it all seamlessly integrate with one another. using XML as the medium of communication.

          Another commenter [slashdot.org] recommended the readings of Bernard Lietaer [amazon.co.uk], who helped implement the Euro. He proposes a currency called Terra [margritkennedy.de], that is supposed to be immun

          • The specification will be tightly coupled to the Java language, the reference implementation will probably use a generated web services interface in XML-RPC or SOAP and be portable to other lanuages.

            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?

            • I guess it could already be implemented. The 100% value equivalent in normal currency would be the total units of currency in circulation divided by the total population. So it actually doesn't need to be the currency itself, but simply a useful graph of one's net worth, say when someone is checking their bank account balance or something. It would be an interesting way of keeping things in perspective.

              Are all potatoes equal?

              Yes, but some potatoes are more equal than others :P

      • The specification will just be a set of Java classes to provide a convenient framework for the implementation of complementary currencies in Java.

        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-

        • 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.

          I haven't been programming for a while, so I'm not the right person to approach. Just give it an open source license and let others on the internet handle porting it to other programming languages.

          • The intended licensing scheme for the reference implementation is a dual licensing under SPL [jcp.org] and LGPL [gnu.org].

            The web service descriptions will probably be sufficient to reimplement protocols by just running stub generators.

    • Re:Why (Score:5, Interesting)

      by attonitus ( 533238 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @01:15AM (#10166729)
      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.

      • 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.

        Not to mention, you won't find any replacement 'tyres' of any kind in Florida. They might look at you funny, then try to substitute with some other kind of part, like a 'tire.'

      • 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 pack

    • Re:Why (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Gentlewhisper ( 759800 )
      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.

    • Re:Why (Score:3, Informative)

      by RPoet ( 20693 )
      If developed for Java, you could easily use it from C# with IKVM [ikvm.net].
    • The JSR did mention JXTA which does not require Java to communicate. If the JSR were implemented via JXTA, then any language can participate by talking XML over the socket.

  • is it just me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dollargonzo ( 519030 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:50PM (#10166351) Homepage
    or does anyone else find it funny that a slashdot comment is linked to in a JSR?
    • If you bothered to: a) Read the article or b) Read his comment you'd realize he he said the JSR ITSELF linked to a slashdot comment, under its example applications heading.

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

      Or that the author of that comment is the same person as the author of the JSR and of this Slashdot article.

      You'd think he could find a better place to put his example than a Slashdot comment.

    • It is only fair for slashdot to link my story if I link to their site, isn't it?

  • Why do we care? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brw215 ( 601732 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:58PM (#10166392) Homepage
    No offense, but why is this interesting. A JSR being submitted is no big deal and this is not exactly earth shattering stuff.
    • Because it make everyone the same. See with timedollars everyone is equal. Doesn't matter if you spent 100,000 USD to become a doctor your time is worth no more than the fat ass who does next to nothing.

      At least that is what it looks like to me after a quick glance at their website.
      • Technicaly thats wrong.
        The currency unit is called "time dollars", as a symbolic name that you are trading in time.
        However you are free to ofer your service time for any amoount of time dollars.
        So a high skilled doctor probably may charge $TD 100 for one hour and a gardener probably charges $ TD 10 per hour.

        Regarding the JSR, I do not understand why it is not enough to extend java.util.Currency to allow non ISO currencies ... the JSR itself is not specific on that and I asume that will be the reson why it
        • 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.
    • Can we please skip these sort of comments? I read one out of every ten stories. Do you see me complaining in the other nine? And why the fsck is this modded up? What is 'insightful' about complaining?

  • Exchange rates? (Score:5, Funny)

    by kinrowan ( 784107 ) <kinrowan AT gmail DOT com> on Monday September 06, 2004 @12:02AM (#10166409) Homepage Journal
    Who will set the exchange rates for those community currencies that aren't tied to a measure of time or to the US dollar?
    • "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 selflessly volunteer.
    • What is is backed by? Your and mine spare time?

      Is not it a kind of a socialist (and further left) response to the Liberty Dollars [norfed.org]?

      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 /. (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.
      • 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.

      • What is is backed by? Your and mine spare time?

        Depends on what you mean by "backed". Their value comes from the work you already performed, so their issuance is limited...in that respect, they're more "backed" than current U.S. currency.

        Is not it a kind of a socialist (and further left) response to the Liberty Dollars?

        No, not a "response" since local currencies like timedollars have been around long before the "Liberty Dollar". In fact the Liberty Dollar, so far as I can tell from their website,

      • My initial thought too: what the hell is it? But reading about it, I realise I've come across some local initiatives like it, in the past. Rough description:

        In a normal job, you get paid normal currency for an agreed upon amount of work (like a number of $$/hour).

        With voluntary work, you do work, but don't get money in exchange. Rewards will be non-monetary, say having a satisfied feeling of having improved the world a little bit. For some programmers, writing Free software could be in this category.

        I

      • ....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 ne

      • 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???
        Yes. Indeed.
        You just need to find one who is accepting yoour IO in bed currency.
        Your firtst line: What is is backed by? makes pretty clear tha you have no clue how currencies work in our time :D no offence. I had neither 4 monthes ago. Bottom line: only in third world countries backed currencies do exist today.
        Our currencies are not backed.

        angel'o'sphere
        • Hey, Angel'O'Sphere, do not take my comments at the face value, OK? (Why /. does not have 'Sarcastic' moderation, after all? ;-) ) ... makes pretty clear tha you have no clue how currencies work in our time :D no offence.

          Well, I guess it was more than compensated by the following gold-backed "currency" link, was not it?

          Bottom line: only in third world countries backed currencies do exist today.

          The good thing about a currency backed by some universally-accepted commodity (gold most common) is that it d
          • He he, yes a sarcastic moderation is missing.

            But, your example is not really understandable, for me at least (I mean your PPPS).

            4 Month ago I read quite good book about currencies and money. I'm working on a MMOG, and we like to introduce player defined currencies ... because most MMOG run into strange hyperinflation problems. So we started to hunt for good books about currecncies, "The future of money" is one.

            (Similar to) Backed money in 3rd world countries is e.g. stone money, sea shell money, and tort
    • Who will set the exchange rates for those community currencies that aren't tied to a measure of time or to the US dollar?

      Market forces, of course. "I'll trade you six Ithaca Hours for three timedollars". You can take it, leave it, or make a counteroffer.

    • There's a proposal for a basket of commodities to be used as the denomination. I think that's one of the best proposals I've heard in that area:

      http://www.futureofmoneysummit.com/terra-project.p hp

      The proposal was made by Bernd Lietaer, one of the architects of the Euro and a strong advocate for complementary currencies.

  • Barter and alternate currencies (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @12:04AM (#10166415)
    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.

    • Re:Barter and alternate currencies (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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.
    • A good example of RTFA, or at least follow a few more links before commenting. Time dollars are not taxable. See here [timedollar.org] for IRS rulings on the subject.
    • No, thats wrong.
      On most local currencies like time dollars and itaka hours and such you do NOT pay taxes, or you can pay the taxes in that currency. it heavyly depends on your local laws.
      angel'o'sphere
    • The IRS has issued three local rulings that Time Dollars are tax exempt. They have given three reasons for this status.

      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 [timedollar.org]

  • What ?is? this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cybrthng ( 22291 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @12:06AM (#10166424) Homepage Journal
    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?

  • This is overly bureaucratic (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 06, 2004 @12:12AM (#10166456)
    I bet you 10 simolarians that this won't work.

  • LETS (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Writer ( 746272 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @12:31AM (#10166547)
    This sounds a lot like the Local Exchange Trading System [wikipedia.org], which has been around for a while. It allows communities to engage in economic activities without official currency if there is none available.
    • Not sure why this is modded funny. Alternative currencies have been able to achieve quite astonishing things in the past, and there's a lot of evidence that they lead to a better society for all than regular currencies. See the works of Bernard Leitaer for more information (his books are fascinating).

      • Not sure why this is modded funny.

        I was just wondering that myself. Google corrected the spelling to "Bernard Lietaer" from "Bernard Leitaer", and Amazon.co.uk seems to yield different results compared to Amazon.com for some reason. It looks like he only has one book called "The Future of Money" on the topic. Some google results say he helped implement the Euro. Do you have any links with a more comprehensive list of his books?

        • The Future of Money is one of his better known ones, there are others. I think one is called the secrets of money, or maybe it was the history of money. I forget. Something like that. It tells you in the future of money covering material.

  • what is this? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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 p
    • 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 [futureofmoneysummit.com]: 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/c [smallisbeautiful.org]

  • Go Wite an App, Not a JSR (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rimu guy ( 665008 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @12:45AM (#10166604) Homepage

    Why is the poster doing this as a JSR? They are requests for Java specifications [jcp.org]. 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 [javasoft.com] to go solving it.

    --
    Java Hosting on Linux VPSs [rimuhosting.com]

    • I can't access the site (darn airport wireless servers don't properly do domain lookups of simple sites...) for the JSR, but I believe that part of the problem domain IS useful in Core Java, that is the specification of amounts with a currency. The basic infrastructure is every bit as necessary in core as time/date or locale. Currency is a very common value type, as are the other two I've mentioned.

      Actual currency exchange systems are a more business oriented issue, but the ability to say new Currency("U
      • 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.

  • dBarter (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @01:08AM (#10166696) Homepage Journal
    You might want to look at Dan Brumleve's dBarter [laboratory...states.com]. 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. ;)

  • These people don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DraconPern ( 521756 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @01:12AM (#10166713) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:These people don't understand... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'd respectfully suggest that you do some research before condemning the idea. Some of these people [amazon.co.uk] do understand a thing or two about economics.
      • That's actually my initial reference book which resulted in me writing the JSR we're discussing here.

        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

    • 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.

    • 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 m
    • There is a reason why we now have bank notes, checks, credit cards, bankers, notaries, etc.
      Indeed there is a reason.
      And you know the reason?
      They are essentially trying to create a miniature banking system (within a community)by hoping people's time is worth zero. You have any backing for that. It sounds wrong in my eyes :D
      I suggest "The future of Money", and probaly also, but not that good, "Money of the future" as reading. The second one is my translation from german, probably the title is slightly diff
    • "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."

      There are many cases where you want to run an independent "monetary" system. For example, if you want to use "points" within a community to reward particular behaviors in terms that make sense for the community. So, for example, in one MMORPG called There [there.com] that gives pointed to builders, awarded by other players based on how much they like what you

  • interesting monetary reform site (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vinsci ( 537958 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @07:55AM (#10167936) Journal
    A number of related books and articles, many with their full text online are available at: http://geldreform.de/ [geldreform.de] in several languages.

    See for example Margrit Kennedy's 140-page book Interest and Inflation free Money [fu-berlin.de] - you'll never look at money the same way again after reading the first chapter.

  • 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!

  • Summary (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @08:21AM (#10168092) Journal
    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.

  • Already tried... this is an instance of JSR 108 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.
  • 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.

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