Hi, We're sorry to hear any complaints about the handling of any requests for information regarding ecash. As you can understand, we are certaintly not planning to create unsatisied ecash users at the very start of the ecash endeavour. So at least we are happy to hear from you so we can act appropriately. DigiCash has the ambitious goal to make the ecash client software available on virtually every OS platform and/or system. Alas, our programmers crew is not that extensive that we're able to release everything at once, we has to resort to a phased release approach. For some insight in the release history of the sundry ecash versions, we refer to our WEB server pages. With this background we answer your questions and remarks, at the hand of some of quote orginating form your mail to DigiCash.
Hal said:
I just figured that I didn't have enough clout for them to bother to respond to me, but today on the www-buyinfo list, Stefan Brands, who many think has the best ecash technology available today, posted that he had had the same experience! Brands himself has still not been given an opportunity to join the beta test. He did not sound very happy about this.
As announced, the ecash-trial starts in phases. Currently we are completing most versions of ecash. We receive quite a lot of good feedback from the first releases. Therefore we decided to change the user-interface to get better software that is easier to use, before confronting the user of the next releases with problems already solved! We decided to first to select tester from our own timezone to facilitate easy voice communication in case extensive support issues. Contrary to our expectations we encountered relatively few problems, so we can soon release also the beta-test to tester in the remaining time zones. So as you can see our release policy is not that staight forward and involves a lot of considerations like usability and acceptance. This is one of the main reasons why Mr. S. Brands HAS received his beta-test version friday the 11th of November, together with all his collegues at the CWI. They all run Silicon Graphics International OS and before that date this version wasn't finished.
I was in the same boat-- I sent in several requests, all of which were ignored. After Digicash issued a call for prototype shops, I signed up. WHAM. I immediately started getting mail asking when I'd have my shop ready-- sometimes two or three messages a day.
Once I got everything up and running, I didn't hear further from them.
Sometimes we can react very fast, but alas this is only the case for standard procedures which we did automate. More specific questions and requests *have* to be handled by humans. We think the people who are willing to invest quite some effort in setting up a shop for the beta test, are very important participants in the beta test trail. Therefore it seems *very* unlike to us that we didn't respond to *any* mail or request from you. Not trusting our own memory ( we do receive more than 100 (yes, hundred) mails on ecash *each* day, even Sundays) we dove right in to it and found a trail of DigiCash answers to your mail with the subject: 'Concerns about ecash'.
Since then, an accident on my WWW server has rendered the e-shop inoperable. I've asked Digicash, in the form of Paul Diniessen, for help reconstructing the bank records. No go.
Sorry we *did* sent you a respons within an hour from your request by my colleague Branko. He is responsible for our bank in the trial. His respons was: -The dbm library used by Linux and FreeBSD are different, so the ecash -databases are also incompatible. If you have a password for getting an -initial balance, you can also use this password for reopening your -account (and keeping your old balance). For the server@fairgate.com -account you can use the password ******** (pw made invisible PD) for this. - -Branko
Of course, it may well be a matter of incompetence rather than insult, but the net result is the same. The more I see of digicash's lack of consideration towards their potential customers and important figures like Brands the more I question whether they have the potential to succeed.
The more I deal with Digicash, the better First Virtual looks. My technical preference is for using Brands or Chaum cash; at present, though, there aren't any shipping Brands servers, and the Digicash folks don't seem to be able to get all their socks in one bag.
We feel somewhat troubled by these comments. We strongly feel that the alleged 'lack of consideration' as unjustified. First we would like to split up your comment in to two different issues, first regarding our potential customers and secondly the issue of Mr. S. Brands. As we mentioned before we deem *all* our users, in the past, now, and in the future, as important whether it concerns "shops" or mere "customers" they all contribute to a successful new payment medium. We like you to consider this phase in the existence of ecash as a genuin beta trail. In beta test not only software is being trailed but the supporting services too! However, it should be noted that we did respond to your mail and requests. On the issue on Mr. S. Brands. As we explained before no way we even considered to exclude Mr. Brands for the beta test. As of the technical appreciation of the Chaum system as opposed to the Brands system and the alleged scalability issues , we propose you contact Mr. S. Brands and Mr. D. Chaum for details. We will give a call today to check if received this mail. We hope to resolve the problems mentioned above and to continue our co-operation. Kindest regards, Paul Dinnissen DigiCash bv.