RE: [ba-ohs-talk] Towards an OHS Manifesto
Thanks Jack, for the friendly introduction. (01)
Let me clarify slightly. Pepper is a commercial Personal Knowledge
Management Product developed by R-Objects Inc, a startup company in
silicon valley. It's based on an easily-extensible, semantic object
model, and peer-to-peer technology. It allows you to create what we
call Personal Knowledge Networks that may include arbitrary
information from the web -- and not just full files, but "pieces"
from files (e.g. one paragraph from an article on a news site. We
call those Peppercorns) and always keeps them up to date. Yes, the
semantic information model in the box supports IBIS, among many other
things. Sharing all or part of your Personal Knowledge Network is as
easy as sending e-mail, and from that point in time, everything
shared is automatically collaborative. Because it's networked, you
can easily relate "your" and "my" Personal Knowledge Networks, eg
because we work on slightly different aspects of the same project.
And because it uses object replication, you can unplug any time, keep
working on it on an airplane, and it will automatically sync with the
rest of the world when you are back on-line. (02)
Pepper is currently in beta 2. You can try it at http://www.r-objects.com. (03)
We are currently incorporating some JXTA (www.jxta.org) functionality
including chat and group chat capabilities. Use cases: "I need to
talk to the person who created this Peppercorn" or "I want to host a
chat with all people who are interested in that Peppercorn". (04)
The Open Revenue model refers to a number of things. First, we give
3rd-party developers complete access to our source code, bug tracking
system etc. You can take Pepper as is or modify it or customize it
for a certain application etc. similarly to what you can do under an
Open Source license and deploy it to your users. There are a couple
of (we think small) restrictions compared with an Open Source
license, the thrust of which is that commercial users (i.e. those
that use Pepper to gain a commercial benefit) of Pepper or a Pepper
derived work owe us a licensing fee. So it takes the benefits of open
source (access to source code, anyone can innovate, ...) and the
benefits of commercial software (there's money to be made) and brings
them together in what is a new package. There are several companies
out there building Pepper-based applications for certain customer
verticals. (05)
I know that many people are on this list who have been working in
this area for much longer than virtually anyone, and we'd be thrilled
to get your opinions and feedback on Pepper. Feel free to contact me
any time. (06)
Cheers, (07)
Johannes Ernst (08)
At 7:54 -0800 2001/12/27, Jack Park wrote:
>For those who are interested in personal knowledge management and
>want to get their "hands" dirty, so to speak, visit
>http://www.r-objects.org/ which is a web site of Johannes Ernst,
>this one for an *open revenue* version of his commercial PKM Pepper.
>With this plan, you get access to the source code for Pepper and you
>can share in the revenue generated by adding features to it.
>
>BTW: Pepper supports IBIS.
>
>Jack
>
>At 07:36 AM 12/27/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>>Jack,
>>
>>Education is indeed a major use case. Software development is a s well since
>>it is software developers who will create the software to further education.
>>
>>It is necessary to teach children who are more adaptable than adults. Let's
>>not overlook, however, that any KM or OHS system we propose or develop will
>>be adopted by adults who do see the value of the new approach - the 10:1
>>improvement requirement is likely to be nearly correct.
>>
>>This is one of the reasons that I have argued strongly for the individual
>>perspective of KM. If there is to be any knowledge to share, I must be able
>>to organize my own knowledge and provide it in a way that makes it
>>accessible for sharing. This is not distinct in any way from either
>>education or software development use cases. Any system that is actually
>>accepted will be used first and foremost by individuals, and those
>>individuals must perceive the benefit to themselves of using such a system.
>>
>>I want to be able to do collaborative knowledge building with small teams.
>>My focus is primarily software development since that is what I do, but
>>there are other collaborations that I would undertake if I could get a
>>decent resolution to that one.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Garold (Gary) L. Johnson (09)