Pekunio

Information becomes monetized while money becomes informatized.

Pekunio is a smart and simple distributed peer-to-peer software application for PC, Mac, PDA and mobile phone that enables the easy set up and use of open private ecosystems using a local currency. Pekunio also makes it easy to found new smaller groups within the larger community while keeping the nature of the larger community with very little administrative overhead.

Pekunio's distributed nature implies decentralized and local responsibilities for setting debit limits within a larger system. Also, Pekunio is inherently more secure than older currencies because all payments must go through its accounts and the money only exists within them.

Pekunio has the potential to catalyse an alternative monetary system for thriving market places trading goods, services and ideas, fueling innovation as it matures.

Your job will be to develop an open source pilot in the form of an evolutionary prototype of both the toolkit and the end-user application. This evolutionary prototype will be used for demonstration to potential users, developers and investors in order to fuel ongoing development and funding.

Pekunio is grown with open standards and open source (GPL) using popular technology (e.g. Java, Ruby, Flash, PHP) using a flexible agile development process (XP, SCRUM).

Money like water

Pekunio simply enables a group of people to exchange goods and services amongst themselves using their own, local currency. Examples of the very many goods and services which are traded include organic vegetables, second hand cars, bricklaying, child minding, computer consultancy, and software development of community-owned efforts.

In order to facilitate their many and various trades, the members of these communities create a currency which circulates amongst themselves and exists solely within the accounts of their association. Groups which start trading at the earliest opportunity are likely to grow quickly.

Money is often defined as being the medium of exchange. It is also a measure of value, as agreed between buyer and seller; in a similar manner hours are used as a measure of time. The act of measuring value for the purpose of quoting prices and then agreeing sales of goods and services also results in measurements, or information about the creditworthiness, credit and debt held by the parties involved in the exchange.

So money is not just the medium of exchange; money is also information about credit. For example, when I go into a shop with a five euro note, the writing on it indicates that the Governor of the issuing bank has given me an IOU for the stated amount.

Pekunio at a glance

• Easy setup—With Pekunio, even the activation process is impressively simple. Download and install Pekunio, authenticate yourself, create your first account and you are set to trade with others. Create new accounts and sub-accounts, issue purchase orders, set debit limits, send and receive orders and invoices and make or receive payments for goods or services bought or sold. Comprehensive reports at your fingertips give excellent insight in your financial situation, on any level of scale.
• Versatile Ecosystems—Use Pekunio to create a flourishing hassle-free ecosystem with a local currency that exactly meets the needs for your sports club, your business (small, medium or large), your partner network, your student network, or even your agile software development process.
• Anywhere, Anytime, Any Device—Use Pekunio on Windows XP or Vista, Mac OS X Tiger or Leopard, your favorite Linux platform or on your PDA, SmartPhone or iPhone. Pekunio's Software Update Service keeps it in sync with the latest version for your platform. Hands free.
• Never lose a thing—Pekunio sprays redundant copies of every transaction to a number of peers on the network. So, no worries when you lose your data, or, heaven forbid, lose your PC, Mac, PDA or phone. Simply reconnect to the net, authenticate yourself and Pekunio will start caching your precious information right away. You'll be up and running again in no time—no loss. Be a good netizen and return the favor and have some of your friends use some of your spare capacity as well. And anticipate the emergence of a some Gentle Giants.
• Eating Our Own Dog Food—Pekunio Core Development Team uses Pekunio for its own agile development process. Creating and estimating stories, their value and the expected cost to implement them. Every accepted story automatically leads to the transaction of the prior agreed upon payment into the account of the main developer. All who contribute, both internal and external, automatically become co-owners. Pekunio is a community-owned effort.

Unfolding Smart Software

Pekunio is software that adapts to us rather than the other way around.

Open Source Development Center

Pekunio comes as a comprehensive open source developer kit, complete with a reference implementation, test suite, protocol specification, default application, sample code, and documentation.

• Development Guidelines—Learn the latest techniques on developing community applications using local currencies that focus on user experience design, and ensure users of your application the best experience for Pekunio.
• Reference Implementation—Use the Pekunio Toolkit and Libraries to build the basic Pekunio user experience and test it against a thorough Test Suite to ensure compatibility.
• Pekunio Eco Protocol—Learn how to use Pekunio's simple and open semantic protocol to create your own implementation for a specific platform, ready for Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.
• Sample Code—Choose from a range of sample code projects that provide development and user interface design techniques for interactive and standards-based design for Pekunio.
• Reference Library—Browse the Pekunio Reference Library for release notes, technical documentation and guides on developing and optimizing Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 applications for Pekunio.
• Gentle Giant—Learn how to set up a reliable, scalable and performing Gentle Giant that mirrors redundant copies of transactions from thousands of Pekunio users to give them peace of mind.

Sharp and Focused Team

Pekunio's core developers form a small, sharp and focused team using agile development process (XP, SCRUM) as it's way of working.

• Lead Developer—One appointed lead developer with oversight keeps the team together and ensures a coherent design and development process, progress and results.
• Ambassador—One key representative elected by the team, represents the interests of the team.
• User Experience—Two lead developers focus on usability, visualization and interaction design to give every Pekunio user the joy of trading.
• Protocol Design—Two developers are the ey designers of the Pekunio Eco Protocol.
• Core System—Three developers lead the development of Pekunio's core "distributed operating system", providing the feeding ground for the end-user applications.
• Agile Development—One project manager leads the agile development process leveraging pearls from XP and SCRUM.

Technology

The basic technology requirements are:

• Open Standards and Open Source only.
• Popular platform to be selected (Java 5, Ruby, Eclipse, );
• Semantic Web (Web 3.0) data (RDF, OWL (or better) for all externally visible data including wire protocols;
• Protocol-centric as opposed to API-centric;

Architecture

Fully distributed. No central servers by design, only by emergence.

Agile Software Development Process

AardRock is fan of agile software development like eXtreme Programming and Scrum and wholeheartedly adopts the Agile Manifesto. Most valued are:

• Test-Driven Development
• Continuous Integration
• Customer On Site
• Daily Scrums
• Weekly Planning Games
• Big Visible Charts that track progress
• Regular Temperature Readings

Tools & Instruments

You will be using fine tools and instruments like:

• MediaWiki wiki for all documentation and discussion;
• WordPress weblog for blogging, for messages on personal, project, and company level;
• SubVersion for version and revision management of source code;
• Maven and/or Ant for automatic builds and continuous integration;
• Eclipse for development environment;
• Mantis for bug, feature, and feedback tracking and resolution;

Incremental evolving requirements

Requirements and specification will flow in during the project. There will be no detailed and complete set of specifications available at the beginning of the project. This is for the simple reason that we don't want to build YAGNI ("you ain't gonna need it") functionality. The project will not build the system, it will grow the system.

Your job

Your job will be to develop a pilot in the form of an evolutionary prototype (as opposed to a throw-away prototype) of both the toolkit and the end-user application. This evolutionary prototype will be used for demonstration to potential users, developers and investors in order to fuel ongoing development and funding.

What you can expect from AardRock

Passion, energy, involvement, committment, dedication, inspiration, attention, time (≥ 1 day/week), joy. We expect this to be reciprocal.

Roles: customer on site, coach, mentor, wise fool, inspirator.

AardRock is all about PEOPLE | SOFTWARE | HAPPINESS.

Please contact Martien van Steenbergen for more information.

Succes en plezier,

Martien.

Pekunio is Ido for money.