The people that are developing open-source software are contributing a great deal to society. Complimentary currencies may hold the key to providing a method to reward those who contribute.



The open source movement has made serious inroads into changing the way business is being conducted throughout the world. In addition to its obvious advantages of being a participatory environment that attracts some enormously talented people to work for free on a project, it also has the added benefit of spawning its own market and user population as a natural byproduct of the development process.

The money world’s version of open source is what has become known as complimentary currencies. Complimentary currencies are simply agreements within communities to use something other than conventional national currencies to facilitate exchanges among the participants.



In a similar fashion to open source, complimentary currencies are a bottom up design, meaning that the money can be created to fill the specific needs of the people using it.



Just as Bill Gates at Microsoft is the antithesis of the open source movement, so to is Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve Banking System the antithesis of the complimentary currencies movement.

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