Open App Ecosystem and Collaborative Technology Alliance

Exactly. :)

I was just about to email you and explain my thinking.
We seem to be coming from the same place and wanting the same thing but had made slightly different assumptions...
That's also why I questioned your objectives for an OAE website.
I don't think we need an OAE website, yet...
But we DO need a CTA website to act as a focal point for OAE work and to bring together the people who are building / will build the OAE.

Phew, so happy you started this thread!

One of the reasons I think we need the CTA is that lots of effort has been put into discussing how we might build an OAE, by various different groups, in different places, at different times, but clearly the OAE is such a big project it would benefit enormously from (possibly, requires) a more coordinated approach to its design and project management...

See https://www.hylo.com/p/23634

As I said in that other current thread, I am opposed to the CTA managing OAE. If we had a consensus vote on that, I would block it.

The objective of the CTA is to gather people that creates this kind of apps ?

The emphasis of the CTA was always more about platforms than ecosystems of small apps.

The emphasis of the CTA was always more about platforms than ecosystems of small apps.

That's very much what I experienced, yes.

To maybe be a little less negative on @olisb 's thoughts here:

clearly the OAE is such a big project it would benefit enormously from (possibly, requires) a more coordinated approach to its design and project management

I agree with that sentiment. The question is how? I am denying that the CTA can do it, or that management from above is the correct approach.

I don't think the CTA has proven that they can manage anything. And their focus has never been on anything like the OAE.

And I think we are trying to work out coordination by the people who are doing the work, which I think is the only method that will work, according to Conway's Law.

The basic idea of OAE in the first place was as an ecosystem of apps that could be developed independently by many people, but that would still fit and work together by means of standards and conventions. That was also the basic idea behind the Internet. As well as Unix.

Another thing brought up by Bob @bobhaugen that I would like to see kept in view is Conway's Law. The broader, perhaps simpler thought is that is matters how we do these things, as it actually affects what we are trying to do.

Maybe there is some agreement — I'm sticking my neck out here so I'm ready to be contradicted — that in order to allow better coordination, we need to find agreement not just on what channels to use, but what "business" to transact in those various channels, and how they interact.

To me, this is a mirror (thinking of Conway's Law again) of the OAE/CTA/DLC target space. On the technical level, we will eventually agree on a set of apps that interact in understood ways through commonly accepted interfaces. This will need to be mirrored on the human level, right here and now, where we need to agree on what work needs to be done, how it is to be divided up into coherent chunks, and how those chunks can be coordinated.

There's some systems thinking that might perhaps be useful here. Can we find a way of dividing up the tasks and responsibilities such that the coordination between those chunks is the least demanding? That is, where there is as much independence as we can get — always recognising that there is inherent interdependency, and it's just a question of minimising it, never removing it.

I'm also wondering whether anyone else would like to try out drafting a conceptual model of all this: what the parts could be, what the relationships between the parts would need to be. And, quick, I want lots of distance from the idea that this could ever be completed by one person alone. Rather, it would be the nub of a test case of whether we can do this in a consensus-oriented way, for the common good. How we do it is important. Every person, given a complex enough challenge, will try to solve it in their own personal way. But here, above all, it is not one person's personal way that we need, it is to find the common ground that makes sense to all. I haven't looked carefully, but I can well imagine that @gregorycassel's MOT might be a great starting point.

If we can manage this top-layer coordination well, serving as a way of bringing everyone into a workable consensus, then I would be very optimistic about future progress after that. The challenge I see right now is for (e.g.) @bobhaugen and @olisb to hear each other with care and consideration, and to come to agreement, initially just on how to discuss these matters.

So yes, much of what has been written in this thread is very pertinent. If the CTA (I'd personally tweak the title for this) or even the DLC could deal with the human organisational side of these matters, great; but we can't just say that without fleshing out rough, initial guidelines for what gets done where (to avoid duplication) and some clear enough idea of how the CTA or DLC coordinates with the technical builders (who may or may not be using the OAE label).

@asimong - I started to quote sections of your comment, but I like too much of it to do that.

I totally agree with discussions now about technical and organizational architecture and how they go together. I sorta think those could be discussed separately as well as together. By separately, I mean we've had a lot of discussions about technical architecture among OAE participants before, and some of that could be brought together as a starter, but not much about organizational architecture.

Does that make sense to everybody?

To me, it's a question of what management, what coordination, is appropriate and effective. Not "effective" just by itself — in some contexts, dictatorship is effective. Effectiveness is essential, but the processes, procedures, conventions, norms (etc. etc.) of coordination and management need to be in line with our shared values — embodied in a shared culture.

I see Bob's "how?" as a good question. Greg usually has a good line on governance. Can we collectively get our acts together and start to answer the "how?" question?

Concretely, what needs to be managed? What actual open app ecosystem work is going on?

• @funkycram is working on a SSO app, and also set up http://cloud.openappecosystem.cc/ , and is also working on a website.
• @ivan116 and @lynnfoster and another person who is not participating in these discussions are working on the Kamasi app in the Fair Coop context, which wants to become part of an open app ecosystem, but is not quite ready for it yet.
• @tiborkatelbach , Lynn, and me, and maybe @robertbest are working on vocabulary translations, maybe with some people from the virtual assembly, maybe eventually with some people from the Data Food Consortium.
• @ahdinosaur I think continues to work on stuff that could fit into an OAE, but in the Root Systems context, not here. He and @simontegg who might not be around here anymore once created Holodex, which was probably the first OAE app.
• @jonrichter continues to do a lot of work in Transformap and other contexts that I think are tuned into OAE in one way or another, but don't surface in these Loomio discussions much.
• I think the Virtual Assembly people are creating work that could fit into an OAE, but are also not discussing it here.
• Loomio could have been an OAE app but has never wanted to support embedded discussions inside other apps, so they don't qualify.

Probably some other work that I am missing...what did I miss?

What management do people think is needed there, other than the mutual coordination among the people who are doing the work?

I don't think trying to get all of the people who are doing relevant work to congregate here in an OAE context is needed, by the way. Most of the people I know are aware that this revival of OAE is happening, and they'll congregate here when it suits their purposes.