I'm back, and I've pulled myself out of the pit of writer's block -- an occupational hazard of those who would weblog.
The OSAF staff has grown considerably in the past weeks. We now number eight paid and four volunteer staffers. We're about to update the people page on the web site, so see it for details. Welcome Chao Lam, Chandler Product Manager and serial entrepreneur; Lou Montulli, founding member of the Netscape engineering team and inventor of the browser cookie; and Aleks Totic, also a Netscape founding engineer.
One of the principal tasks has been to gain momentum in the development process itself. It's been a bit of a struggle, but our noses are to the grindstone to get initial code on the web site for developers to begin to look at. We're not going to make the self-imposed original Dec. 31, but we will make January. Not a great precedent to slip our first scheduling milestone. We'll have to do better.
Mitchell Baker and Chao Lin have made some big strides in getting our act together on community collaboration tools. Expect to see something rolled out in the coming week. We've also made considerable progress in the overall architecture. John Anderson will be posting architecture diagrams in the days and weeks to come.
Personally, I'm excited and chastened. We're no longer just talking about how great it's gonna be, but actually trying to make it be great. It's the meaty part -- I worry about biting off more than we can chew.
Posted by mitch@osafoundation.org at December 08, 2002 10:52 AMYou guys must read this research paper from IBM if you haven't already.
The idea of the interrupt token is quite brilliant even if it isn't terribly original. A proper implementation in your new product would take you ages ahead of everyone else
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/414/forum.pdf
Posted by: Alex Sirota at December 10, 2002 10:36 AM
Just read about the Chandler project from a Fortune mag I picked up (along with a cold and an ear infection) on a plane last week. I'll apologize in advance if my comments are out of place or repeats other entries.
You mention gaining momentum in the development process, and in other entries, the 10% of the work that always takes 90% of the time. All too often, that 10% of the work involves the interface.
For a real kickstart, I humbly suggest having a look at the now-ancient Apple Newton interface. Yes, the device had its flaws - too big, too expensive, handwriting recognition too clumsy. In spite of several years now with Palms, Blackberries, and countless e-mail systems, I still miss the simplicity and intuitive features of my old Newton.
With the recent availability of tablet PCs, it's clearly the time to take a fresh look at the Newton's features. Examples:
- Enter "call fred" on a scratchpad, and fred's number shows up automatically
- When someone emails a message with "can we meet for lunch on Thursday?", double-clicking on the message results in an automatic appointment entry in the calendar with the sender at the right time.
Just a couple of simple examples among hundreds of other great concepts in that product. How would the interface extend to collaborative tools? Dunno - but it would could be phenomenal to see what the open source community can do with it.
Posted by: RJ Juneau at December 10, 2002 06:17 PM
RJ -
OSAF has Andy Hertzfeld, of the original Mac team, working on interface.
He has written so far for OSAF (surely among other things):
http://www.osafoundation.org/Vista_prototype.htm
It's worth a look and probably goes much deeper than fortune did.
Posted by: Jeremiah Rogers at December 10, 2002 07:37 PM
These days, cross-platform makes me almost assume Java, server-based, and accessed via HTTP. Upon reading the site's content I understand differently now. Would this eventually be able to evolve into something that could be run on a Linux box with an HTML front-end so I won't have to ask users to install a client?
Posted by: til at December 10, 2002 09:55 PM
Yes, there will be a Web client which will run, of course, with an HTML front end.
Posted by: Mitch Kapor at December 14, 2002 11:46 AM
I really enjoyed checking out your site, I will be back often.
Posted by: Mr. Trusted Pharmacy Online at March 26, 2003 09:32 AM
After two years the development goes very strongly
Posted by: andry at July 23, 2004 12:55 AM