GNU Taler 0.0.0 Released: GNU Tries To Get Into Electronic Payments

GNU Taler "v0.0.0" was announced today as the initial alpha release of this project aiming to be a free software electronic payment system but so far just fits alongside some of the other obscure or early-on GNU projects.

GNU Taler is described in its debut announcement as "a free software electronic payment system providing anonymity for customers. Payments can in principle be made in any existing currency, or a bank can be launched to support new currencies. Merchants are not anonymous, and--due to income-transparency--the state can perform effective tax audits."

This GNU payment system isn't too useful yet as it doesn't interface with traditional banking systems (or even Bitcoin) but only the Taler project's own "bank". Taler currently offers some basic front-ends Python and PHP code. Taler's pillars seem to be about being taxable but anonymous and libre software. They also want to hold reserves in existing currencies so that their crypto coins would correspond to existing real-world currencies.

More about the taxing, they write, "Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can learn their citizen's total income and thus collect sales, value-added or income taxes. Taler is thus a currency for the mainstream economy, and not the black market."

If you want to learn more about this project, visit Taler.net. The Taler protocol is documented here. The Taler 0.0.0 announcement can be read via the info-gnu list.