OpenAppJS Project Update - September
Simon Tegg
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New Developers!
The biggest news is that other developers have become interested in the project:
Mikey's going to help out Benjamin Lupton with the interconnect project and possibly align it making use use openappjs components.
We were also contacted last week by Ethan, David and Rylan from Colab.coop (a social enterprise service company similar to Enspiral and based in New York ). They use loomio and are very interested in cobudget. They had also been thinking along very similar lines of a suite of apps running off an opensourced microservice API's. They want to get a project reporting app up and running quite quickly, and will focus on the existing people + groups + [reports? + projects?] APIs.
Welcome to openapp! We look forward to the new energy and ideas these folks bring!
Logistics:
Mikey has returned to the States but continues to work on openappjs and has also been helping out on cobudget.
I've taken on a 30hr/week contract with Twingl to pay the bills and keep working on openapp outside of this. Their trailblazer project has some similar UI ideas as the openapp data browser ui. I have some freedom to pursue interesting ideas in the trailblazer frontend so I'm hoping to take these learnings and apply them to openapp later on.
Craftodex (people data browser for Enspiral Craftworks):
Craftodex will be our first attempt to combine the people API service with openappjs UI components. The plan is the this will eventually be able to browse all kinds of open- linked-data out there on the web (e.g. http://dbpedia.org) using user-friendly semantic search,and customisable view options.
To this end we've been building up tiny UI pieces in the OpenAppJS repos that we will combine into apps (you can see how this works here
The goals of this project are:
Build out full set of UI components following the ARIA spec. Eventually making composing a frontend app as easy as writing a schema.
Appeal to js developers and get them interested in openApp. To this end we're using the mercury frontend framework. Mercury is a highly performant and scalable framework but could do with some more examples and better documentation By building our components in mercury we help the nascent mercury community get off the ground and give them some working reference examples.
- We're thinking of licensing things in a Peer-production license and stir up these developers and get them thinking about alternative economic models that support open-source developers directly (rather than just working for big corporate and doing open-source on the side).
- Test out hypothesis that users find a federated semantic search across multiple providers valuable.
- Test the hypothesis that users find browsing data in a 'network view' (rather than just the prevalent 'list view') valuable.
- Provide Craftworks with somewhere to find contact information about our rapidly expanding team :).
Lynn Foster Sun 21 Sep 2014 4:18PM
I'd like to start a discussion on how to get to standards for the shared data involved in open apps. @elfpavlik this might dovetail nicely with your topic. My concern is that the existing standards tend to be very corporate centric, and also a bit helter skelter. Do we adopt them and force our data into them? Do we adopt and add to them? Do we start our own effort? We could look at the Org model and/or the Product model for an example.
Jon Richter Mon 22 Sep 2014 3:33AM
Slightly Off-Topic : @bobhaugen Yes, that was there ;) : https://www.loomio.org/d/Aho7cdZP/webdpack-exmple
Ethan Winn Mon 22 Sep 2014 5:22AM
Hi all, very heartened by the open and gracious reception. As we noted to Simon and Mikey, we have been architecting some services much like the People and Circles in OpenApp, and are thrilled to be able to collaborate with a wider network of like-minded folks to build something more than a one-off.
@lynnfoster your points on corporate-centric domain modeling as well taken. Our immediate needs are to develop tools for coordination of projects in a cooperative business (project reporting, organizational documentation, secure sharing, etc.). On the one hand this is a somewhat corporate problem space, but on the other our being a cooperative and a collective means that many assumptions in the (even more) corporate domain do not apply to us.
Our hope is that by being true to that ethos and developing tools that incorporate a wider array of collaborative approaches and domains into our work we will build something that both better supports our work and opens up new collaborative possibilities.
Bob Haugen Mon 22 Sep 2014 11:21AM
Caroline Smalley Mon 22 Sep 2014 8:45PM
@bobhaugen @simontegg PPL being developed by a group also behind CIC. founder is Stacco aka Ah Uhm on FB. Michel will be spending some focused time working with them early next year - if I recall correctly. I have an outline of his schedule and know he's crazy busy on tour with little internet time. We are connected though.. he's involved in the latest developments taking place with CM.
My interpretation of PPL is that it is an evolving concept. Figuring out exactly how it will work not yet identified.
It's philosophies will be integral in the way opportunity is created through CM (http://thecitizensmedia.com/pub/section/the-commons?id=1174)
Caroline Smalley Mon 22 Sep 2014 8:49PM
@bobhaugen @simontegg
just sent an email to Stacco asking if there's any further info updating where things are at with PPL's
Bob Haugen Mon 22 Sep 2014 9:10PM
@carolinesmalley - the info I posted above came from Stacco.
Bob Haugen Mon 22 Sep 2014 10:22PM
@simontegg @carolinesmalley and all: Michel Bauwens says it will be a year before they are ready with an improved reciprocity-based license. Until then, he suggests using the PPL as-is and switching to the new one next year.
Caroline Smalley Tue 23 Sep 2014 12:11AM
thanks @bobhaugen Stacco: "As Michel says the PPL exists and anyone can start using it right now. It is, however, far from perfect, so here's a short video of what we want out ideal license to look like and that's what we'll be working on this year.
We´ve been using it for over a year with no hassles. "
'short video' is as link above.
CM has PPL concepts built into the way it works, so far as those who provide solutions to communication and design challenges will be paid for their work (using cobudget and loomio as budget/decision making tools), and all profits will go to those who invest. my ? concerns how the co-op will valuations on related PPL's.
Bob Haugen · Sun 21 Sep 2014 4:14PM
P.S. is this another case of forking the conversation (started out with OpenAppsJS Project Update, now is about organizing a hangout)? This is not a complaint, I see how it happened, it was very natural and totally works for me. But it harks back to a previous question from (I think) @jonrichter about moving part of a thread to another Loomio discussion...