[ic] Interchange Vend::Payment and Business::OnlinePayment

[interchange-users@icdevgroup.org]

Hi,

I'm the current maintainer of Business::OnlinePayment, a set of related
CPAN perl modules for processing payments with different online
gateways: http://420.am/business-onlinepayment

After writing backends for half a dozen gateways, I think I'm ready to
take a stab at an overhaul fixing the base class itself, hopefully in
cooperation with others - http://420.am/business-onlinepayment/ng.html

One thing that I think is very important to the success of this effort
is buy-in from the Interchange folks.  Instead of continuing to write
your own Vend::Payment modules, I'd like to invite Interchange to
participate in the Business::OnlinePayment effort - the gateway backends
you write would be uploaded to CPAN and useful to other folks, and the
gateway backends myself and others write would be available to
Interchange users.

What would be necessary to get the official support of Interchange for
this project?  I'm completely willing to contibute my development
time to making this happen, design the new API for Interchange's
needs, and so on.  Please let me know.

As I see it, the stages in this migration would be:

1. Write a Vend::Payment::BusinessOnlinePayment (or similarly named)
   class which is a wrapper around Business::OnlinePayment.  This would
   allow Interchange to immediately support all the gateways that
   Business::OnlinePayment supports.

2. Direct folks interested in adding new gateways to write
   Business::OnlinePayment modules instead of Vend::Payment modules.

3. Lastly, migrate from the existing Vend::Payment gateway modules to
   their Business::OnlinePayment counterparts, leaving only
   Vend::Payment::BusinessOnlinePayment (or just incorporate everything
   into Vend::Payment at this stage).

Again, I'm not asking for any code here, I'm willing to do the necessary
patches myself.  What I'm looking for is the "buy-in" that yes, this
would be acceptable to the Interchange powers-that-be, and also your
requirements for making that happen, i.e.:

- Is some sort of "ownership" of this project by the Interchange folks
  necessary?  Host it on your CVS, allow you to make releases of the
  gateway modules, etc.?  Let me know.

- Is the either/or with Crypt::SSL and Net::SSLeay a requirement, or
  would you be happy to depend on just one?

- What else would be required from Business::OnlinePayment for each of
  the stages above?

Hoping I've piqued your interest.  :)

-- 
_ivan