Re: Brands excluded from digicash beta

["Paul Dinnissen" <paul@digicash.com>]

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.