ISSUE-9: Algorithmic Pricing (was: Re: The path forward for Web Payments)

On 10/26/2013 05:45 PM, Joseph Potvin wrote:
> RE: Web Payments & Web Commerce Specs "Specs out of date"
>
> Manu or someone else, Can you explain the relationship between the
> Payswarm spec and the GoodRelations spec?
> http://www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/goodrelations/v1.html

PaySwarm is a a protocol for performing value exchange via the Web. In
general, it allows you to do payments for goods/services easily via the
Web. PaySwarm is like HTTP for payments.

GoodRelations is a vocabulary that can be used to describe products,
prices, storefront, and company data. It can be used to describe the
things you can buy, how much they cost, when a store is open, etc.
GoodRelations is like HTML for products.

> But should we assume that the Payswarm Web Payments & Web Commerce
> conceptual structure ought to map to the GoodRelations class diagram?
> http://www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/goodrelations/v1.html#uml

Keep in mind that the only thing you can compare is the set of PaySwarm
/vocabularies/ and Good Relations. There is no GoodRelations protocol,
GR is just a vocabulary for marking up goods for sale.

So, what you're going to be comparing are these two vocabularies:

https://w3id.org/payswarm
https://w3id.org/commerce

with this one:

http://www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/goodrelations/v1.html

There is little that overlaps (which is a good thing). The assumption we
made in the beginning is that the PaySwarm vocabulary would provide the
bare minimum necessary for the protocol to operate. Any more detailed
expression of the product, service, store, or offering would be marked
up using the GoodRelations vocabulary.

Also note that GoodRelations has now been integrated into schema.org:

http://schema.org/Offer

> If so, should we assume that updates to the GoodRelations spec would
> normally be followed by accommodation in Payswarm?

GR and PaySwarm tend to be fairly loosely coupled, which is by design.
So, changes to GR shouldn't affect PaySwarm as we don't depend on GR for
the core protocol. That said, any developer can use GR on top of the
PaySwarm vocabularies to describe their products and offers in greater
detail.

> In particular, I wish to make the following pair of proposals,
> namely that:
>
> (a) the "hasCurrency" property be adjusted to permit the selection
> of more than one simultaneous currency as valid units for payment
> http://www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/goodrelations/v1.html#hasCurrency
> For example, a vendor may be willing to accept USD, EUR and/or BTC
> in payment.
>
> (b) the "UnitPriceSpecification" class
> http://www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/goodrelations/v1.html#UnitPriceSpecification
>
>
include a "hasUnitPriceIndex" property.

The GR spec is the wrong place for this feature. GR could add it, but if
you want the payment protocol to have this built in, the place to add it
is in one of these two places:

https://w3id.org/payswarm
https://w3id.org/commerce

This issue is now being tracked here:

https://github.com/web-payments/payswarm.com/issues/9

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Meritora - Web payments commercial launch
http://blog.meritora.com/launch/

Received on Wednesday, 30 October 2013 07:59:45 UTC