On the realizability of contracts in dishonest systems

Post date: 27-Mar-2012 16:18:53

Upcoming paper (to be presented at COORDINATION 2012, Stockholm, June 14-15 2012)

On the realizability of contracts in dishonest systems

M. Bartoletti, E. Tuosto and R. Zunino

Abstract. We develop a theory of contracting systems, where behavioural contracts may be violated by dishonest participants after they have been agreed upon - unlike in traditional approaches based on behavioural types. We consider the contracts of Castagna-Gesbert-Padovani, and we embed them in a calculus that allows distributed participants to advertise contracts, reach agreements, query the fulfilment of contracts, and realise them (or choose not to).

Our contract theory makes explicit who is culpable at each step of a computation. A participant is honest in a given context S when she is not culpable in each possible interaction with S. Our main result is a sufficient criterion for classifying a participant as honest in all possible contexts.