[Opensim-dev] Micropayment

[Sean Dague]

On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 07:46:53PM -0800, Kyle Hamilton wrote:
> Technically, Linden has already built such a micropayment system.  You
> could actually transact with Lindenbucks with a fairly simple XMLRPC
> app, and provided that both the buyer and the seller have Linden
> accounts.  At that point, the problem would be authenticating to the
> XMLRPC server that you'd have to build on the Linden live grid.
> (Since Linden doesn't provide any means of performing cryptographic
> primitives other than hashing, it would be rather difficult to
> implement secure authentication in any mode.)
> 
> (And note, this also doesn't refer to the 'limited license' rights on
> each lindenbuck.  I don't know that they could be used in such a
> manner without violating the terms of the license.)
> 
> There's cryptographic protocols that exist to protect the identity of
> the buyer and the seller from each other in a "must be done online to
> protect integrity" mode.  There's also cryptographic protocols that
> exist to protect the identity and integrity of transactions in offline
> (i.e., eCash-type) modes.  (The protocols I refer to have means of
> auditing a transaction to determine who is trying to cheat, in every
> case where cheating is determined -- and also have means of
> determining cheating in every case that cheating occurs, without
> spilling any information in any case where no cheating is going on.)

I think that in world Money is one of those places where the OpenSim
grid runners are going to need to provide code appropriate to their
situation.  Running a sim with no money is easy.  Money opens up all
sorts of other non technical issues: privacy laws, taxes, refunds, etc.

It would be nice to avoid drowning out the technical conversation on
list with lots of money pontificating.

That being said, patches are always welcomed. :)

     -Sean

-- 
__________________________________________________________________

Sean Dague                                       Mid-Hudson Valley
sean at dague dot net                            Linux Users Group
http://dague.net                                 http://mhvlug.org

There is no silver bullet.  Plus, werewolves make better neighbors
than zombies, and they tend to keep the vampire population down.
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