Maybe a forum for swapping components?
Not quite the same thing as you are talking about, but I have many times thought about the possibility of people swapping components with each other. Suppose we had a forum for posting components we need and components we can offer. Just as an example, say that I need a few JFETs of a particular type, which I would have to order from abroad with a lot of extra handling and shipping costs etc. Perhaps somebody else can buy these easily, or simply has a surplus stock of them, but this person needs, or could at least make use of, some other component that I can buy easily, or happen to have a lot of, say a particular op amp. We could then try to agree to swap mabye ten JFETs for three op amps, or whatever. Then we simply trust each other and mail these to each other.
I don't know how well, or even if, it would work. One obvious problem is that we would have to trust each other, but I hope that would not turn out a big problem. Anyway, you would only swap with people you decide to trust. Another problem might be that some people would tend to always be the ones offering components, and some would be the ones always asking for components. But that is self regulating, I think. If you have a lot of components and don't need anything else, you have no need to participate unless you simply want to help other people out of kindness. If you ask for components, you must have something to offer. Some people live where there is a constant difficulty to buy most components, so how can they use the system? Well, they could occasionally buy a "stock" of components they know other people will ask for once in a while, and use these components to trade for others.
So what's the point if you are one of those people who will have to stock up components to participate? Well, you often don't need in advance exactly what components you will need. You will once in a while find yourself in the situation where you need just e few of a particular transistor, or perhaps a few resistors with unusual values or whatever, or mix of some components. You could place an order, but that can quickly turn out costly. There is shipping and handling, and maybe customs fees. Some companies also have minimum orders and if you need several things, you may not even be able to buy them from the same dealer. In the end it can turn out very costly for just a handful of transistors, or whatever.
This idea is primarliy intended for small amounts of things that can be easily mailed as letters, although if people want to start sending transformers and stuff to each other, then thats possible too. There is of course already a forum for people selling components, but they don't have everything and the main point would be to get rid of the moneyhandling entirely, by exchanging components for components. Yes, it is old fashioned and the tax authorities wouldn't approve of it if happening on a large scale, but things like this is coming back in local communities in many countries, so why not in an internet community?
What do you think?
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. We are waiting on our new software and server before we make any changes to the forum though. Dan, our dedicated software/systems/engineering guy has pushed this software about as far as it can go!!!
