The economic principles of the N'Guild cooperative are adapted to the engineering activity of the cooperative. We'll need to use several currencies for different types of mutual services. The challenge is to try to keep it simple enough.

What defines a currency

• one master value, that can be suggestive and not backed on rare ressource but on abundant ones,
  • time is moderately abundant but at least everybody has a minimal amount of it, and a maximal amount too.
  • good feeling and reputation game based on community feedback, can be another currency value.
  • fluctuant community-driven factors, like overall effect in bugtracking for example, or kewlness for a new design.
• a transaction process.
  • most transaction processes are direct from user to provider
  • in some cases require a third party expertise to validate parties agreement, like for a development or an audit.

Examples of currencies

Support

The support can be managed in a mutual manner, and use a system not far from the affero system to be able to 'gift' someone because his advise have been great, accurate, or just helpful.
A currency should be used for that dedicated type of transaction.

• How is it created ?
  Naturally, by an arbitrary amount of 'thanks token' provided to Support Subscriber, renewed each year. Let's say 100 thanks.
  That currency creation reflects the group advantage and the community creation of wealth by gathering effect. The more there are people the more it's possible to get the proper information from someone pertinent.
• How is it spent ?
  on forums, live support, blogs that are managed in the support webspace
  on the n'guild support backend to send 'thanks' to someone else.
  by mail or instant messenging, possibly using hard encryption (to be done).
  on irc channel, by a special plugin on a bot, so the 'thanks' can be given on the fly.
• How it behaves ?
  When given, half of the thanks are transformed in 'congrats'. The thanks collected can be spent like any thanks. For the congrats use, see below.
  They total thanks that a user got, as well as the average number of thanks per thank is accounted. they indicate the overall support level that you have provided
• What are 'congrats' for ?
  they are used for bidding on wishes, with the induced legitimacy of the contact with other users.

... to be continued ...