My ideas are greatly influenced by Cyclos, which is an Open Source project funded by STRO, and led by Hugo Van Der Zee. Cyclos is many years old, and built on older technology that is complex and requires a considerable investment to learn(it is based in Java, Spring, and JDO). There are few groups using Cyclos outside of STRO. I think we can do better.
There are several other projects and companies of note in this space. There is Matthew Slater's Drupal-based LETS system. There is also Hugh Bernard's package CCLite. There is a commercial package called GETS. For a complete list see Stephen DeMeulenaere's Complementary Currency Site. Please feel free to add any project links in the comments section.
There are several areas of activity that this project addresses.
- Community Currencies, Local Currencies
- These tend to be the idealists who eschew commercial enterprise and generally believe that by modifying the characteristics of money society can be improved. The theory that governs each group differs quite considerably.
- Virtual Currencies
- Virtual Currencies are similar to Community Currencies, but usually do not have a paper format and typically the term is used exclusively in commerical enterprises.
- Complementary Currencies
- Used to mean Currencies which are used alongside national or international currencies (such as the Euro).
Underneath all these ideas, there are fundamental concepts that no software supports in a simple and powerful way.
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