On Wed, 2017-08-23 at 22:34 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote: > I guess I don't understand what you mean when you say something is > "different" than contracts. If it's a "supplementary legal code", it > described a set of usages to follow. If that's what you call a > contract, it's a tautology to say all SLCs are contracts...? Maybe > I'm missing your distinctions here.
I consider something to be contract-like if it works as an agreement between a set of people, enforced via SHALL-like mechanisms (and eventually via the courts/Referee). Typically contracts have text and often internal state, but those aren't really requirements. Something like the first version of Promises (effectively, Agencies that posted a fixed message, and for which the ability to sue them could be traded) would be an example of an agreement system that's clearly different from Contracts; they couldn't meaningfully have internal state, they could (but weren't) be used to form the basis of an economy, etc.. -- ais523