I see a world where server exchange and trade data automatically and where data abundance and analysis will lead the world to be more rich and equal, but we are still at stone age now.
A good start is twitter, read this article to have a glimpse on the ridicule situation:
Or you have a giant company looking for Terabytes of data or you have a maximum of 15 call for 15 minutes, this is just a result of payments structure walls on low transaction fees, now we can go after this, let’s do it.
With this proposal, in the case counterparty still doesn’t think to it I want that you build a system that can be used to update this situation, thanks.
And he’s suggesting that we offer a pay-to-use API, which Twitter seems to be vehemently against. There were a few discussions about this before in the Counterparty thread and chat, too. The first link works just fine, and the second is malformed thanks to this stupid forum system automatically adding http:// to something if you copy paste a link…
The first is still broken as far as I can tell, but if he’s human, that’s fine.
Source:
I can’t see the link so I don’t know what the ridiculous situation is, but anyone can run their own Counterparty API server, so it’s completely different from Twitter situation.
Here one can run their own server and even sell (or provide for free) API service. There’s no centralized source of information that is controlled by Counterparty.
Now I’m getting a 404 too! Odd… It was an article criticizing twitter API polling limit and now its gone.
But of course you’re right, anyone can create such an API service and ask for payment. But I don’t think it’s something that the Counterparty foundation wants to get involved in, and as a decentralized protocol, “Counterparty” itself by definition cannot. It’s up to 3rd parties to fill this niche.
Yes, that’s why the idea sounds good (it’d be nice to have such service) but at the same time it’s a 24x7 job that because we’re completely open can be provided by companies that specialize in that kind of service, such as https://block.io/ or others.
It’s good to always try this before do anything else on the internet (you can also try other search engine caching systems, just search the title on them).
http://blockscan.com has some API’s (including a merchant API beta version), but they are limited for free use. I’m sure if people notice that there is a profit to be made, pay-to-use API’s will emerge.
Okay, why does everyone immediately think “some company will charge fees”. Why can’t we have counterpartyd APIs that require payment in XCP? Suppose I upload an ‘app’ of compiled python bytecode (or maybe that ethereum VM), where you pay XCP and bitcoin computation fees to the app, and then app pays the miners in transaction fees for the cost of providing a global distributed consensus.
This would be great for GPL’ed code… if you provide the derivative works of the code for free to anyone to redistribute, no charge. But if you use it internally in your for-profit company, you pay per-use GPL-exception fees for access to the API
Okay, why does everyone immediately think “some company will charge fees”.
@hozer there’s nothing wrong with anyone charging fees - in fact the whole point is that anyone can charge fees (decentralization of finance).
Ethereum Smart Contracts will most likely be paid to Counterparty nodes that process them. So pay-per-contract fees are in the platform (anyone can publish, currently limited to testnet) and if people code their contracts to take a cut, that’s what happens. So that part is already there and unrelated to the exchange of server data by freeloading on someone’s server (which is my personal interpretation of the suggestion).
If you need an API server, set it up in a VM on your home PC, punch a hole in your home f/w (or create VPN to your Web server in the cloud) and you have a free API server.
> But if you use it internally in your for-profit company, you pay per-use GPL-exception fees for access to the API
1. How do you know if some bitcoin address is owned by a non-profit?
2. GPL-ed code: you probably mean OS licenses in general. I’m not sure what would be licensing repercussions for GPL-style contracts running on the MIT license s/w. My initial thinking it that wouldn’t fly because of the viral nature of GPL. But if you thought OS licenses in general, then dual (or any multiple) licensing could be used to assist certain business models.
But regardless of these licensing possibilities, the question was about getting free and unrestricted access to the Counterparty API and all Counterparty platform data (read the cached post on Twitter API for additional context).
The answer is the same as it always was: it’s unrestricted and free. I have 3 Counterparty API servers running at my home right now and 1 on Amazon cloud - no questions asked, no fees paid, no restrictions on the use of data.
