Re: [kDev] $5 million USD says we're going in the right direction...

[Daniel Harris <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 25 Oct 2003, at 00:42, Dave Cridland [Home] wrote:
> On Fri Oct 24 14:03:18 2003, Daniel Harris wrote:
> > http://osafoundation.org/
>
> They've been working in similar areas to me, in fact, hence I'm aware 
> of them, and they of me.

Cool. What are you up to then?

> Much of their concept is related to general metadata, as is Kendra, 
> but it is leant towards collaboration data relationships - primarily 
> email - and they're very much of the peer-peer mindset, which doesn't 
> fit so well with Kendra.

But Kendra is becoming more and more peer-peer like. In some ways it 
always was. I don't mean illegal file sharing. I mean that the Kendra 
Network is server-server but when I'm running a OSX at home, for 
instance, I can run KendraBase locally. I can also log into a server on 
the Internet and run KendraBase hosted. Am I a peer or a server? Who 
cares! ;-) The lines are becoming fuzzy.

Although developing a client for email is not what we want to do. We 
will need to be able to talk via email in and out. And that's only a 
subset of our needed messaging and transaction system. We need to be 
able to talk to the outside world in many ways: SOAP, Email, LDAP... 
And Chandler developers are going into details on subscr!bing to 
calendars and address books and we want to do that too but in a generic 
way on any piece of info.

> You might want to look at the GNOME Storage project, a very 
> interesting concept indeed, and considerably more wide-ranging than 
> both Chandler and Kendra. I'll dig out a URL if needed, although I'd 
> get it from Google as I've completely forgotten it. :-)

Found it - http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/ - looks interesting. 
I've added it to the Wiki. It'll be good to track. Interesting to see 
they went with PostgreSQL as we have.

They are spending a lot of time/effort on the human language interface 
and that's not of interest to me at all, no sir. As with Chandler will 
they be developing specific desktop applications? I'm happy we're using 
the most common cross platform interface around - the web page.

> But it relates to Kendra as well, in as much as it relates arbitrary 
> disparate data by adding metadata on the fly and at user request. Very 
> interesting indeed, epsecially WRT how much they actually have 
> written.

From the screen shots looks like it's all desktop related but the 
underlying concepts may be of use.

> In many ways, their concept of replacing the filesystem - and, indeed, 
> the file - is far closer to some of the concepts Kendra appears to 
> have.

Yeah, sure, taken to it's logical conclusion KendraBase could be viewed 
as a file system that can hold any object and any relationship. Whether 
it would be fast is another matter. At this stage flexibility is 
paramount.

Cheers Daniel