What is openBarter

A software to build a barter market place allowing multilateral exchange of measurable values, where money is only one of them. Such a software could change the relation between finance and economy, that is money - mono-dimensional, into multidimensional aspects of the worldwide common wealth.

Economics

Money was preferred to barter because it was less liquid. This means if you propose something, it is difficult to find someone that accept it, and at the same time, provides what you are looking for. This is true if only bilateral exchange are considered. But multilateral exchange make barter nearly as liquid as money.

Multilateral exchange are exchange cycles between two (bilateral) or more partners (non-bilateral). For non-bilateral exchange, they are at least two ways to generalize the best price rule (lowest for the buyer, and highest for the seller). The first maximizes an individual product or collective product. By ignoring non-bilateral exchanges, we make the confusion between these two kinds of products. To know more, follow this link.

Common wealth

Let's consider a set of transactions occurring as the result of competition of bids on a small time interval, and the amount of values owned by participants immediately before and after this set of transactions.

When money is used, this amount does not increase if money is not emitted by governments. Lend and debt are not considered since the time interval is small. The competition is then a null sum game where money is supposed to be the unique dimension of the common wealth.

But when barter is used, each measurable value has a distinct quality, and the common wealth is multidimensional. The competition changes the distribution of values between participants in order than the subjective appreciation of values increases.

Ecologics

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Global_Warming_Predictions.png/250px-Global_Warming_Predictions.png For the first time of mankind history, the stability of live of earth is it's responsibility. Will we be clever enough to survive? When Joseph Shumpeter asserted economic crisis were cyclic, he supposed when the economy came out of control of monetary systems, the natural environment were able to regulate it. But the environment regulation potential limits have been reached! It is not true any more for this new crisis, and the need of alternative regulation mechanism is the main concern of this project.

History of the development

  • The work has been started by Olivier Chaussavoine in 2002 with good financial and software skills.
  • A prototype has been developed using the wonderful python language, a Mysql database, an Apache server and the Django framework. This software running on http://www.openbarter.org was an experimental ground for algorithmic and ergonomic concerns. Main principles have been explored or adjusted by this experience.
  • The core algorithms are implemented using Berkely db and benchmarks are being developed for industrial implementation.
  • A secure and robust implementation is being planned. This website meets the community of developers contributing to this development.

The most recent developments are opensource software, and can be obtained using the following command: 

svn co svn://dev.openbarter.org/bench/trunk

contact olivier DOT chaussavoine AT openbarter.org