Overview of the Open Money Software Playing Field

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At the P2P Foundation, we strongly support the Grassroots Economics efforts of Will Ruddick in Kenya and elsewhere.

Please read: Will Ruddick of Grassroots Economics on the Characteristics of a Fair and Decentralized Currency System


Directory

Before getting to the issues, here is a synopsis of each of the main projects, in order of age. These projects are selected on the basis that they are open source, have multiple implementations, and support community exchange using an arbitrary measure of value.

Cyclos

Language/ platorm Full time developers Implementations Plug 'n' Play? Url
Java 4 Many No www.cyclos.org

Cyclos is the software implementation arm of the Social Trade Organisation. It is an open source, java, comprehensive accounting package used in increasingly large projects around the world. The German Tauschring network picked up Cyclos and now use it routinely, contributing back code. Many other 'one-off' projects also use it as a back end accounting package.


Community Exchange System (CES)

Language/ platorm ! Full time developers Implementations Plug 'n' Play? Url
MS asp 1 200 in one Yes www.ces.org.za

Arising from a grass-roots movement in Cape town, CES is a free web service that hosts 200 'Exchanges', each with its own currency and separate database. Some exchanges charge membership fees in the national currency, some in the currency of the exchange and some use the optional transactional levy feature. Trade is possible between exchanges.

ccLite

Language/ platorm Full time developers Implementations Plug 'n' Play? Url
PERL 1 No www.hughbarnard.org

Cclite is a Perl package for local exchange trading systems (LETS), banking and other alternative money systems. Multi-registry, multi-currency, web services based transactions and templated to give multi-lingual capabilities.


Fourth Corner

Language/ platorm Full time developers Implementations Plug 'n' Play? Url
Php <1 More or less www.fourthcornerexchange.com

Fourth Corner Exchange is a small family of LETS like groups. Their php/MySQL application was written for multiple implementations of that specific model. LETSlink UK has forked the software and done several implementations.


Drupal & Community Forge

Language/ platorm Full time developers Implementations Plug 'n' Play? Url
Drupal 1 + 1,000 35 No / Yes drupal.org/project/mutual_credit
www.communityforge.net

A Drupal module for web developers to implement a complementary currency with total flexibilty over usability, design, wireframing etc. Community Forge is a non-profit hosting Drupal implementations tailored for LETS.


oscurrency

Language/ platorm Full time developers Implementations Plug 'n' Play? Url
Inoshi 1 2 No www.opensourcecurrency.org

Developed by members of the Austin Time Exchange, this project is now under development for the Bay Area Community Exchange. While the platform, Insoshi is not well known, much attention has been given to openness, so that the system plugs in easily to the rest of the web.

Also worthy of mention is Time Banks whose membership includes a special license to use the proprietary 'Community Weaver' software.


Circular Multilateral Barter

Language/ platorm Full time developers Implementations Plug 'n' Play? Url
Python 1 No sourceforge.net/projects/cmb
www.multiswap.net

"Circular Multilateral Barter" (CMB) is aimed at supplying local enterprenours with a way to exchange goods within a p2p-network, without using money or any other currency, overcoming the "double coincidence of wants" problem, inherent to traditional barter.

One thing that distinguishes CMB from other credit commons is that all debts in CMB are person-to-person debts. There is no central political/administrative unit to decide who deserves to be trusted and who does not. Because of this, CMB should be able to scale-up very well, so that local communities can be seamlessly aggregated into larger ones.