What would a hypothetical, GPL license for money look like?

Etienne Zoupic Hayem responds:

“Metacurrency (Eric Harris Braun & Arthur Brock) answered this with : Open rules, Open transport, open data.

Open Rules : you can see the rules and edit them

Open Transport : the flows happen in an open source environment with transparency

Open Data : you can/could access anybody’s datas, flow, history
For a complementary currency scheme today, there are 2 things that do interest me, 2 maps, and they need to be visible, accessible and transparent in order for me to assess a system :

– flow of the currency : rules of creation, how and when, rules of circulation : where and how, rules of desctruction, how and where.

– rules of governance : who created the currency scheme, who decides it now, who can decide / edit / modify the scheme, how do I enter the governance’s scheme??

When the first map gives me the model of the currency : its vision, mission, goal and design ie : mechanism chosen, the second map gives me the power concentration or division

The big difficulty with money when you speak about tradable goods is that it is an agreement : So if you fork, your change the rules. Which is what is happening between bitcoin and freicoin, they are not using the same software cause if you fork and chose your own system, changing’s the design scheme then you can’t trade anymore with the other one.

So while in GPL or software code I could go alone for my new distribution and I would/could have users taking it further in 20 years, when I create a money or currency scheme, I need other players alive to agree the same rules as me at the same moment or there will be no game exchanges. Forking alone is stupid with a monetary scheme because it’s a collective game.

So a GPL licence for money would be :

– Everybody can see the code of creation – Everybody can propose modifications as long as it is accepted by others / majority / the community (to be defined) – you are free to replicate the design of this currency elsewhere.”