On Wed, Sep 7, 2011, Evgeni Pandurski wrote:
Circular Multilateral Barter 1.4 Release Announcement
We are pleased to announce that the next stable release of our software
for peer-to-peer barter exchange is now available.
**This release adds an important functionality, that have been missing
in the previous releases!**
Changes:
-- Implemented new product/trader discovery mechanism.
The idea is that traders can make their list of partners publicly
available. This way they say: "I trust this guys. I checked them out."
There are 2 ways users can view other users' partners:
1) They can click on the name of the partner in their partners list,
then click on the "view trusted traders" link. This way, they can view
the partners of their partners.
2) They can use the public search page that is generated for every
trader. For example:
https://www.multiswap.net/search/751181894/?q=alexThis search-URL can be used in any third-party website.
-- Minor changes to the manual.
The source code is available at:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/cmb/"Circular Multilateral Barter" (CMB) is free server-side software for
managing peer-to-peer networks for circular barter exchange.
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.
CMB allows everybody to issue their own trade-backed currencies, which
others can use to pay each other with. So, one way of thinking of it is
as a "multi-LETS", plus there is a open market place for exchanging one
currency for another (via circular trade).
Here are some of the advantages that CMB offers compared to traditional
approaches:
* Traditional approaches (fiat money, barter dollars, LETS points)
unfortunately blend social trust into a fragile system of collectivized
credit. CMB makes it possible for individuals to use their own judgement
in choosing whom they are willing to trust. That is: you supply products
to customers who trust you, and you receive products from partners whom
you trust.
* CMB does not suffer the double coincidence of wants problem. The
trader you deliver goods to and the trader you obtain what you need from
do not need to be the same person, so there is much more flexibility for
arranging trades.
* CMB allows virtual money to circulate at infinite velocity so that no
real money is actually needed. That is: trading is not limited by the
global scarcity of money or any other commodity.
* CMB uses money solely as a standard of value for a short period of
time (typically a day). Thus CMB is insusceptible to changes in the
value of money.
Go to
http://www.multiswap.net/ to see CMB working!
