Manifesto for collaborative tools¶

Eugene Eric Kim wrote a manifesto for collaborative tools.

These four steps for improving collaborative tools are his conclusion:

• Be people-centric. This applies both to how we design our tools, and how we market them.
• Be willing to collaborate. We all belong to a community of like-minded tool developers, whether or not we are aware of it. Working together will both strengthen this community and improve our tools.
• Create shared language. Our tools share more similarities than we may think. Conversing with our fellow tool builders will help reveal those similarities; creating a shared language will make those similarities apparent to all. As a shared language evolves, a shared conceptual framework for collaborative tools will emerge, revealing opportunities for improving the interoperability of our tools.
• Keep improving. Improvement is an ongoing process. Introducing new efficiencies will change the way we collaborate, which in turn will create new opportunities to improve our tools.

I found the link via Bill de hora. With him, I started thinking RDF RDF RDF halfway the article. He sees an additional problem:

The essential problem is that vendors do not want to offer collaboration at the risk of undercutting their wares through interoperation. Collaboration neccessitates the free flow of data across applications - whereas most vendors would rather produce suites and kitchen-sink uber-apps to encapsulate as many uses of data as possible.