Sat, 18 May 1996, Ian Goldberg wrote:
I am, in fact, going to Canada, and was considering writing a version of the library while I was there. Now, Chaum has a patent on 2 lines of code (blinding the coin before it goes to the bank, and unblinding the value returns). Believe it or not, I would like to stay within the law.
BTW why isn't some other company besides DigiCash selling similar software product as the Ecash mint & client? Are there some international patents or trade secrets involved? There is a real market for similar software solution and it should not be too hard to write, considering it is a financial system and there is big money involved. Public domain ecash software would be an interesting effort to accomplish. In case of full source availability it should be possible to develop commercial systems based on public software, it might even be more secure than commercial software which source is available for review to only certain persons. There is also a problem with Digicash licencing: they licence only to banks, and usually only to one bank in each country. I believe there are also many companies that are not banks, who would also like to issue ecash for specific purposes. Setting up an separate company issuing electronic cash, not connected to any of the existing banks, is something that probably will happen sooner or later. Of course there are problems of legislation and clients trusting the company, but those are not problems that the software manufacturer like Digicash should decide. Jüri Kaljundi jk@stallion.ee AS Stallion