Three open source prediction market software options

In May there were none.

The software that has run Foresight Exchange for many years (and soon a political market) was open sourced today (under an odd license).

Zocalo had a new release last week.

FreeMarket seems to have been available for a little over a month.

For the heck of it, compare the one item represented by claims on both FX and FreeMarket’s demo: Gas$3 and $3 for a gallon of gas respectively. The FX claim is trading lower (about 30 versus about 35) even though for it to pay off gas must reach $3 by 2005-12-26 while the FreeMarket demo claim pays if gas reaches $3 by 2006-08-18.

FX is still the only site with remotely interesting claims. Hopefully all these packages will directly support conditional claims one day soon (Zocalo has plans) and the sites that use them will get more interesting as a result.

Update 20050830: The first sentence above is wrong. Chris Masse’s list reminded me of Peter McCluskey‘s U.S. Idea Futures Market from 1999 (I didn’t realize until now that the source has been available). Check out USIFEX’s excellent FAQ on What are conditional claims and how do they work?

5 Responses

  1. For what it’s worth, the freemarket demo site is intended more as a showcase of the current capabilities of the software than as a living, functioning prediction market. It’s common for users to sign up, look arround, and never come back, so the site doesn’t see a whole lot of action.

    Conditional claims are interesting, and it’s something we hope to integrate as an option once the code stabilizes.

  2. […] If the Washington Stock Exchange advisory board is any indication, WSX could displace IEM and Tradesports as the source for quotable market odds for the 2006 US elections. The AB may mean nothing, but assembling the names it has demonstrates some foresight on the part of WSX, as does reducing its risk through use of proven open source prediction market software. […]

  3. With the open market software still rare in South Africa, how does one begin to create software such as Symbian for Nokia smartphones if there wont be anywhere where one can get assistance localy.

    Is there a website with free Symbian Software where things can be downloaded?

  4. Letloto, Google knows more than I about Symbian development.

    That does raise a feature PM software should consider — a lightweight UI for mobile users. I occasionally access TradeSports Light, though not from a mobile.

  5. The FreeMarket project at http://www.freemarket-project.org/ is no longer available and the USIFEX Website is defunct too, including the FAQs about conditional claims.

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