Re-Launching the CTA - Proposal closes 19.08.17

Hi Oli and all,

Is there any write up or other materials produced from the the large amount of work that's been done before?

Other than broad visions, I'm unclear on specifically what OAE is doing, or what the group is for.

Thanks!

Hi @mozboz
good question! Yes - lots, please see the references at the bottom of my proposal doc - I hope that helps?

Let me know if you need more detail. The latest OAE work is being discussed here https://www.loomio.org/g/exAKrBUp/open-app-ecosystem

@olisb I'd be interested in what you think are the differences between the OAE and the CTA.

I see a couple of differences at least in emphasis between the OAE and the CTA, from the beginnings of each:
1. The OAE was never about platforms. One of the OAE slogans was "protocols, not platforms". The goal was many small apps and services that can work together. Platforms could use the apps and services, but it seems like a different goal.
2. The OAE seldom mentioned APIs. Several of the members focused on shared vocabularies instead.

We had recent discussion in a OAE-related Telegram group that includes some explanation of the differences between APIs and vocabularies for interoperability. I posted a copy in this OAE Loomio thread: https://www.loomio.org/d/C0V8UDqg/ecosystem-technical-architecture

Short version: if every app or service publishes its own API, a combinatorial explosion can ensue when some community wants to use many of them.

I am not opposed to APIs. They are important. And there's a dance between vocabularies and APIs, where the APIs will use the vocabularies, and both will influence each other.

But (for example) in that CTA re-launching document, all I see is API, nothing about vocabularies, and a lot about platforms. That's ok, if that's what you want. But it seems like a distinct set of differences.

HI @bobhaugen
good questions :)

To me the differences are:

The CTA is about highlighting which groups are working on / towards collaborative technology - part of which is the OAE. It's objective is to show what is going on in the 'collaborative tech' space and to encourage participation

The OAE is about the development of: "The Open App Ecosystem": A suite of interoperable tools which support transparent, democratic, decentralised collaboration.

I don't think the CTA should exclude APIs or protocols or platforms

I understand your preference for protocols over platforms and APIs, and personally completely agree :)

I will add mentions of protocols and vocabs to the proposal doc

@olisb I think that doc already mentions protocols, but not vocabularies.

That's a good point about groups that are working on technology for people to collaborate with each other. OAE was more about technologies collaborating with other technologies. The goal was to allow people in communities who use many technologies to be able to collaborate better.

So in this whole conversation, we have groups that develop technologies for people to collaborate with each other in various ways (Hylo, NRP, OCP, Communecter, Loomio), which at this stage tend to be monolithic platforms, and groups of people who want to collaborate with each other possibly using technologies (Sensorica, Fair Coop, Enspiral), and groups that are developing technologies and techniques for interop between the various technologies (OAE, ValueFlows).

Might have some other dimensions, too...

One thing about the list of organizations to be invited: I could think of several others, as I think could several other people. The problem with such lists, as in the original CTA call, is it made people who were not listed think they were not part of the club. I do understand that such a list is also informational, gets across the idea of who is possibly working on something related. I wonder if you can find some language that gets the idea across but does not smell so "it's-our-club-and-you're-not-in-it"?

"I wonder if you can find some language that gets the idea across but does not smell so "it's-our-club-and-you're-not-in-it"?"

Hopefully it doesn't smell of that too much!?? It would be an open club, free for anyone to join (as long as they agree to the principles and values).

The only official "members" of the CTA would be the people and orgs that officially "sign up" - but that doesn't stop the CTA listing all the other great and good projects that we love and respect and linking to them... and encouraging them to join too ;)

@olisb

I don't think the CTA should exclude APIs or protocols or platforms

I agree, if it wasn't clear. But you might notice that while I have helped to develop some platforms (NRP, OCP, etc), and they are open source, I don't list them as candidates for an Open App Ecosystem. I did not start the OAE conversations, but I was around for the beginning, and there was always a strong reaction against monolithic systems (which those are), and I understand and am going with it.

Possibly part of the diff between OAE and CTA...?

I did not start the OAE conversations, but I was around for the beginning, and there was always a strong reaction against monolithic systems (which those are), and I understand and am going with it.

Bob and I disagree a bit here. I think an OAE needs to be architected to support both. Too many monolithic platforms exist now, and they need to be made interoperable with each other and with smaller newer apps designed to be more peer-to-peer from the beginning.

Nah, we don't actually disagree, I probably did not explain very well.

I agree that OAE (especially vocab and protocols) should be used by existing monolithic platforms. I just don't think OAE should create any new monolithic platforms. Ok?

Ok with me. Sounds like we 3 (at least!) agree ;)

"I wonder if you can find some language that gets the idea across but does not smell so "it's-our-club-and-you're-not-in-it"?"

Hopefully it doesn't smell of that too much!?? It would be an open club, free for anyone to join (as long as they agree to the principles and values).

Just FYI, I always had that "club" sense from the CTA from the beginning - it was started by a group that felt close to each other socially, while as an older female, who is also not at all interested in or suited for being an entrepreneur, and perhaps a bit farther out on the "principles and values" side, I didn't fit very well. There was a certain in-group hip-ness feel to it that I am perhaps too sensitive to.

Just a bit of feedback to help your general understanding, I'm not personally bent out of shape, and look forward to collaborating with everyone involved. :) I also haven't studied the new document carefully enough yet to see if any of that feeling comes out in the doc - so this is a historical comment at the moment. I'll make time in the next few days to do so.

" I also haven't studied the new document carefully enough yet to see if any of that feeling comes out in the doc - so this is a historical comment at the moment. I'll make time in the next few days to do so."

Thanks Lyn I hope it comes across as more inclusive than you describe the past...
It is certainly meant to be very inclusive.

Without adopting a definitive personal stance, I want to indicate some potential issues regarding the idea of "relaunching the CTA".

Collaborative Technology Alliance was a specific project, and network, created in Nov 2015 through a union of two prior initiatives by Edward West and Ishan Shapiro. The public was openly invited to join CTA in this rather popular Medium post by Edward. (I'm one of ten folks thanked/acknowledged by Edward at the end of that article.) Edward invited people to join a specific CTA Hylo group. Note that there was tension sometimes related to Edward being Hylo's CEO, as well as some technical inconsistencies and shortcomings in the platform.

To the best of my knowledge, everything that anyone has ever labeled "CTA" was discussed either directly or indirectly in association with that specific CTA Hylo group. For several months from Nov 2015 onward, it was IMO a quite fertile ground for cross-pollination of varied ideas. (It still exists, too, but currently seems inert.)

We had a specific collaborative authorship directory at https://cta.hackpad.com/ . Some useful stuff there IMO.

Anyway, here's my point: I'd bet that Edward West and some other people still feel like CTA is mostly or essentially their project, even though they held no coercive authority over most related discussion and activity. And if so, that's okay with me.

Frankly, I personally wouldn't want to try to re-launch CTA without the direct blessing of other people (including Edward, Ishan and Connor Turland) who worked much on it before. Much potential IMO for confusion, and some potential for harmful conflict.

Hi @gregorycassel

Thanks for your thoughts. I should have explained, I have been in conversation with Edward West, who is busy with Hylo, but has read and agreed with my / our proposal to re-launch the CTA.

  "Frankly, I personally wouldn't want to try to re-launch CTA without the direct blessing of other people (including Edward, Ishan and Connor Turland) who worked much on it before. Much potential IMO for confusion, and some potential for harmful conflict."

I have also reached out to @ishanshapiro about the seal, but not heard back yet. I would love to have his thoughts as I recognise and massively value the work he put in... haven't seen him here in a while tho so if anyone else knows how to contact him / what he's up to these days that would be great?

I think I've seen @connorturland in these threads occasionally and again, would massively value his input. Anyone know how to contact him / what he's up to these days?

Having co-founded The Open Co-op https://open.coop in 2004 and run the OPEN 2017 Conference in London in February, Edward seemed to think I would be well placed to work on this re-launch, and I sensed he would be happy to see it evolve without his direct involvement, as he is so busy with Hylo.

Edward and I are overdue another catch-up which was intended to cover more on strategy, but I doubt any of 'founders' of CTA v1 would be against a re-launch which builds on their work... if they are, hopefully this proposal will bring that out, and we can decide what to do to move forward.

Best
Oli

Thanks for the added context @olisb . I knew that someone had referred to being in touch with Edward, but wasn't sure who it was.

Well, I'm open-minded about potentially relaunching CTA, and I'm also open-minded about potentially connecting OAE to CTA in some way(s). However, the devil (or god) is always in the details. Before getting closely involved, I would want to see any specific guidelines or rules for governance of a specific project, network or group agent.

I share some but not all personal links in these comments. Anyway, I try to be very technical and precise in such contexts, because of my previous experiences in some ethical and legal controversies.

@draft 's useful post:

https://www.loomio.org/d/8RT3JfyU/open-app-ecosystem-and-collaborative-technology-alliance

should help clarify my thinking of how the CTA and the OAE are related :)

as he put it:

The objective of the OAE is to create a suite of connected apps.
The objective of the CTA is to gather people that creates this kind of apps

You could add that:
The CTA project manages the development of the OAE.

The point of my proposal is to build on all the original work of the CTA, since much of the background work has already been done (they even have the seal :) ) and to try and avoid more isolated groups starting afresh, so we cab build a bigger, more effective collective, which is easy for people to understand, and get involved in!

I think you're bang on about needing rules and guidelines, but hopefully the
Principles and values section in the proposal (again, taken from previous CTA work, they are not my words) are good enough to get us going, in terms of who can join the CTA.

The CTA project manages the development of the OAE.

No.

The OAE has always been an independent project, peer of OAE, with its own history and principles and emphases, which are not opposed to those of the CTA, but are not the same, either.

And no, I can't really speak for the OAE, either, it has never had any governance or real organizational form. It started in Enspiral, but Enspiral as an organization never really got behind it, it was always (and still is) a few enthusiastic people from Enspiral.

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

The CTA project manages the development of the OAE.

I would add that the CTA doesn't manage any projects now. Let's wait and see if there is a solid CTA relaunch, and see what the organization looks like, before talking about joining forces in any way.

Actually, the only project I remember the CTA managing was something that Edward funded and Connor was coding on, but the decision to initiate and the management was all done behind closed doors, as far as I know. Or perhaps that was not a CTA project, I'm not sure. In any case, there is not exactly a track record there.

I am quite comfortable managing our own project(s) as peers.

The OAE is feeling its way into existence and imo showing promise as becoming something real. Why is this a good time to complicate it with something that is not even active? People who agree with where the OAE is going should just join the OAE and get to work!

P.S. I am not against people re-launching the CTA by any means. I am against any connecting of the CTA and the OAE organizationally at this stage.

P.S. besides that Hylo thread about the difficulties in CTA collaboration I mentioned above:
https://www.hylo.com/p/23634
here's one that is more about OAE:
https://www.loomio.org/d/Ftyjx3Xg/what-are-the-aids-and-blocks-toward-collaborating-on-an-open-apps-ecosystem-

Let us learn some lessons and figure out how to do this stuff better.

Hi all :) good to see you. There is much to say about this. Thanks @gregorycassel for tagging me in. For starters, I might mention that I worked deeply with Edward on Hylo throughout last year until this June, and that the last months I've been along the West coast of the US with Ishan. CTA has often been swimming through my mind, I have always been unsure, and too tentative to re-approach it, having had some challenging (as well as many great!) experiences of working on it. So I find myself excited, yet tentative about this. Obviously I still believe in the cause. I have always been happier to have my sights on the ecosystem as a whole than any singular tool/platform/focus, though I see it as necessary to zone in to more singular focus periodically.

I think that interoperability on the technical level is far easier than interoperability at the social level, the level of organizing ourselves and doing collective sense-making of conversations and developing coherence. For anyone trying to develop the CTA, I have learned that the time investment that must be made communicating with the really interested people is a huge commitment. Without being able to hold the coherence as a group (having never mostly met one another) the load of holding coherence and communicating it falls on to individuals.

A useful thing is to learn, through revealing, what everyone's deeper intentions are in being present. What motivations are at play? Some may have the desire to see and develop immediate and applied progress on an actual technical level. Others may have the desire to foster broad participation and the community itself, aligning many parties. To me, both are valuable and we could benefit from progress on both in parallel, if people can find their best avenue to contribute.

To myself reveal, I would say that I have more passion to see and develop the social side of the CTA, finding a way, first and foremost, to foster a shared identity and community of intent/practice through 'signing up' and adoption of some principles, seal, etc. For my own personal well-being I have been trying to distance myself from the more technical things, including coding, but would have ideas to contribute there if I were asked, having focused intensely on that level early last year.

I appreciate all of your optimism (the fact that there's conversation here at all) and your efforts.

@connorturland thanks for answering @gregorycassel 's call.

I understand if you don't want to contribute technically, but for everybody else's info, Connor created two of the very early Open App Ecosystem experiments, Personator and Communal. Communal (if I remember correctly) was something like what @funkycram is working on now: SSO and navigation over a bunch of community apps. So any ideas you have in that vein would be really interesting.

And I have to agree, that the social side is harder.

Thanks for sharing those Bob. To clarify and add one thing, the SSO aspect was not Communal, rather I deployed the Stonecutter tech by d-cent at ctauth.com to test it out.https://github.com/d-cent/stonecutter

Thanks @connorturland for your encouragement and wisdom.

I echo your sentiment.

My passion is for building more effective collaboration between a much wider and larger group of participants than fade in and out of this group, in order that we can approach the task of designing the OAE in a much more structured and effective way than we'll ever manage through this Loomio group alone

I think you're right but i'd go furhter to say I think to be effective we are required to:

foster a shared identity and community of intent/practice through 'signing up' and adoption of some principles, seal, etc

i.e. An "organization for collaboration", and the CTA would still seem the best vehicle for that imho.

It's great that you seem to feel I'm not out of place, suggesting we build on your work to date :)

Sorry not to have more time to answer other questions right now...

@lynnfoster

The first ever mention I saw of the OAE, being discussed was in 2014 by the awesome (Enspiral crew)[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lfy9Q2OdssTMPm-mZ23UVDutfsCYhH_z0qz1bpsOfco/edit#]

@bobhaugen yes, lets learn lessons from the past this time round ;)
We seriously need to get better at collaboration.

It's clear that some people want to work on tech, some on vocabs, protocols, other's on indexes, others on SSO or systems architecture, which bit comes first...? whilst others suggest the 'social' side, and governance, which turns off others and visa versa etc etc. and round we go...

We are not being effective as a collaborative group.

So I propose we "relaunch" the CTA, or actually "Launch" the CTA, since despite all the valiant work, which I absolutely applaud, the CTA (as far as I can tell) never actually got to the point of agreeing a shared vision / purpose that people could sign up to...

Really, that's all it takes. Perhaps we should boil this down to just a single sentence to start with, something everyone is happy to sign up to...?

Then we can split out into self managed groups, to refine "Governance", "systems architecture" but whilst (at least!?) working under the unifying banner of a shared purpose.

Hi all, it's really great to see everyone poping into the conversation carrying all their experiences and good will in create this common movement. very well described @connorturland , I recognize a lot of my personal experience in what you shared. And like the optimism it carries.
@olisb There's a lot of cummulated value in all this, all our works and experiences put together, is really overwhelming .
I see you strongly pushing to launch the CTA entity, I ask myself, isn't that what's already going on here? CTA or OAE or COSystem, OpenSystem ... whatever the entity the process seems the same to me , I don't think one is based on people and the other on code and processes. I beleive there's a lot of people behind the code in the OAE and as much code behind the people in the CTA, and I beleive all this is the same energy. One or the other, doesn't really make a difference. The important part is not in the WHO we are , but WHAT we are all doing and the most important part is , WHAT are we doing TOGETHER ?
@bobhaugen It's more important to see what we have in common, than listing our differences, don't you think ?
Based on that, a real ecosystem lives on real exchange processes ( as described in all those rich theoritical documents ). The Will has been around for a long time in various forms and places, and the reality is, it's far from easy to implement.
If we're all here again, i guess we can happily say we're all dedicated (or addicted) to a common vision.

To keep it as simple as possible, For the moment i think OAE is the right (simple, open and neutral) entity to carry all this. I find we loose a lot of energy around branding, the most important is the Flow and the Energy we all create together.

@bobhaugen It's more important to see what we have in common, than listing our differences, don't you think ?

Sorry about that. I was trying to explain why I thought it was a really bad idea to try to have a revived CTA try to manage OAE work.

Beyond that, I participated enthusiastically in both CTA and OAE, just doing very different things.

practical matter:
It would be great to get more of the 123 members of this groups to share some thoughts in this thread - and on the vote. Does anyone know how we can 'ping' them to let them know we'd like to hear from them - apart from @mentioning them one by one, which seems silly/like lots of work!?

Also, on the vote itself, I have tried clicking "REMIND" for the undecided 25, but the page only loads about 10 of them and then has a "LOAD MORE" link, which doesn't work for me... - any ideas?

any ideas?

I would think that one excellent way to get your idea of a re-launch out into a large group that would be interested is to post it in the CTA itself. I'm not sure why you didn't go that route in the first place, actually. The CTA may have more to say about its own re-launch than the OAE. 😉

where do you mean when you say "CTA itself"?

where do you mean when you say "CTA itself"?

https://www.hylo.com/c/collaborative-technology-alliance

(sorry should have linked)

Great to see people new to me, though clearly well-known to others: I mean @connorturland and @tiborkatelbach — great contributions, thank you!

To go back to the thread context by @olisb, I'm wondering if it would be more helpful, not to think of this as "relaunch" of the same CTA with new energy, but the new launch of a reframed CTA, possibly with a tweaked name, that reflects a more nuanced understanding of the relative roles it plays vis-a-vis the OAE and indeed the DLC (diglife.com).

If CTA (under whatever name) is to deal more with the organisational side of things (and I don't want to pronounce on that, as it needs to be a consensus view) then I would really appreciate a modified name to reflect that, and before its launch, some sense of its self-accepted mission and terms of reference. This could go hand in hand with a complementary differentiation in the OAE.

I am still lacking clarity about how to articulate, to relate together functionally, the CTA and the OAE, if we try to differentiate their roles and functions in this kind of way.

If the CTA is where we go to discuss process, governance, etc., all the more need for it to have clearer process and governance itself. Between us we have many examples of governance clashes and crashes, so can we put together our collective intelligence and craft something less prone, less liable to discord, and more able to cope with conflict, even turning it to advantage with skillful, restorative conflict resolution processes?

I agree.
As i said in another thread I don't think the CTA ever did "launch" really, as it never got to the point of having anywhere people could sign up to! So yes, I think we can consider this proposal to be about "launching the CTA" which gives everyone who gets involved a voice and hopefully avoids importing any of the conflicts or disagreements (clashes and crashes - good words ;) ), whilst still allowing us to cherry pick the best bits of the work on the CTA and OAE to date :)

A method / process for mangaging conflict resolution should clearly be part of this new Org.

ah - of course - thanks Lyn. The simple reason I did it here and not there was that there seems to be much more engagement here, and (for me at least) notifications don't seem to work in Hylo, so I never know if someone does respond, without checking back... plus i find it very hard to find the URL of pages on Hylo... so linking becomes v hard (even harder than here - lol).

I made the actually proposal in the Neutral Discussion space on CTA as that seemed like to space most related to CTA on Loomio, perhaps that was a mistake too...? Either way, hopefully we can still build on the conversation here and the outcome of the decision will be useful for helping map out a way forward.

In collaboration,

Oli

@olisb do I understand correctly that you do not actually want to relaunch CTA as-it-was, but to create a different organization that might be related to the CTA goals, maybe even have the same name, but not the same website, or use the same Hylo software, or have the same organizational (lack of) structure?

In that regard, what did you think of Michel Bauwens' comment in this related Loomio thread?

OAP is a practical project,

CTA is a meta-project, trying to make sense of the eco-system of which OAP is an essential part, and promoting cooperation and interoperability of commons technology. It could organize conferences bringing various people together to foster cooperation, looking for funds that could be invested in the more important projects, etc.

As an aside, I was amused by @michelbauwens1 inventively rendering "OAE" as "OAP". Good move, I would say, changing the name to avoid the perhaps over-pretentious term "Ecosystem". Maybe "P" could stand, more humbly, for "Project"?

There seem to me various "ecological niches" available in our "ecosystem", and as it happens I tend to see the DLC more as the meta-project, much as Michel describes it, while a renamed CTA might perhaps take on the practical community and governance "niche", covering organisation, decision-making, policy, etc. Everything to do with how an "alliance" should work as an alliance.

One of the many great things about this discussion is that we can surface and discuss these potential niches in our ecosystem. But I am not an ecologist!

the perhaps over-pretentious term "Ecosystem"

I've probably not mentioned this before, but I'd personally prefer "system" to "ecosystem". System is IMO straightforward and accurate. "Ecosystem" is IMO a creative/artistic effort to (artificially) suggest that a specific human-designed system is analogous to a naturally emergent ecosystem.

Edit: I've not mentioned it before because it's not a very important point to me, and I'm always concerned about the amount of text in these asychronous discussion forums.

Hi @bobhaugen et al,

 do I understand correctly that you do not actually want to relaunch CTA as-it-was, but to create a different organization that might be related to the CTA goals, maybe even have the same name, but not the same website, or use the same Hylo software, or have the same organizational (lack of) structure?

Yes, I think you've understood well... (sorry if I have not been clear)
The CTA as it was, imho, never officially became an 'organisation' and my proposal is to actually launch an organsiation (i.e. to get to the point that as many of us as possible agree and sign up to a shared purpose and some principles/values, that others who are interested in collaborating on open tech, can then find and sign up to).

I feel the CTA is a good name, (Edward even has an appropriate URL he said he could offer to us) but that it needs a public facing home; an 'official CTA website' where people can sign up. So yes, that would not be the Hylo, but it might point people to Hylo / Loomio / Diglife / wherever we decide we can coordinate best, for group discussions etc. And yes, this 'officially launched CTA' would definitely need more organisational structure than the original discussions CTA ever achieved.

My hope was, that since so much valuable work and discussions were had in the CTA's past, and here in the OAE Loomio group, that we could draw out the best bits of both, and build from there (to save having to start from scratch) to launch this new org.

In that regard, what did you think of Michel Bauwens' comment in this related Loomio thread?

I like the idea that the CTA could so more than just promote and co-ordinate....
I agree CTA is a meta project.

promoting cooperation and interoperability of commons technology.

Yes, I agree with that absolutely. That is the one of the goals, probably the main goal of the CTA imho.

looking for funds etc, organizing conferences... ?

Yes, one day! That was definitely the plan in the original CTA. But, to start with, I hope we can get to a point that we can actually launch a more effective organisation for collaboration, to help others find us and join in, and to hopefully reduce the number of threads we all need to follow to know what's going on.

Hope that makes sense?

Makes more sense, thanks. We have some (I think) complementary ideas which Lynn will write up after breakfast.

Ah, I didn't really understand where you were trying to go, @olisb , now it makes a little more sense why you were asking people here instead of in the CTA itself. Although I still think that out of respect for the original organization, it would be best to also be in contact with the hylo group as well as the other core organizers in addition to @edwardwest . You did frame it as a re-launch, and used a lot of the original material from the CTA in your proposal.

Here is what I thought was really valuable in the original CTA: It somehow had this incredible network effect, and people flocked to it. I give the founders a lot of credit for that. So during the period it was active, it was a great hub for people to find like-minded people, and discuss the collaborative technology issues of the day.

At the same time, as I have said, I couldn't support the seal, and the goals of the founders were completely valid, but so different from mine that I (and others like me) could not have ever been actual core members, even if they wanted us, which I'm pretty sure they didn't. At the same time, I would be happy to collaborate on overlapping work with people, including all of these people, with these different but compatible goals.

So, I think some careful thought about organizational design is called for, not everything should be lumped together. And I think some sort of (re)launch of an umbrella organization that doesn't try to be more than an umbrella organization would be really great.

And here's another complementary idea: https://www.loomio.org/d/1PKD8lTu

I did not coin the phrase, but I think the idea was that these apps should all work together. It's not just a collection. I am sure everybody knew the difference between software and wetlands, for example.

I think the idea was that these apps should all work together.

That's basically how I define system. (All systems.) Of course definitions vary, but I think my definition is simple and useful.

Maybe "eco" implies a holistic view of interdependence and sustainability, or whatever, to some people. I think the term's kinda misplaced here, but it's no big deal and I certainly don't want to argue about it.

Greg, I agree with your definition of system, but I don't think most people would get that from a collection of independently developed apps. So, while I did not coin the open apps ecosystem name, I liked it immediately, and still like it. Think metaphorically. Or, poetic license?

I gotta say, I like "ecosystem" quite a lot too, for different reasons, more like it brings up more the right mental data structure to me for this kind of networked set of apps that can just plug in and function in lots of different ways, where "system" brings up something much more tightly coupled and internally dependent.

But then, I am not the word-smith you guys are @gregorycassel and @asimong . :)

But yes, just chatting here, not anything I want to spend a lot of time on and I would completely defer to the group.

Well, I like both the term and the concept of "ecosystem" as well! The thing is, to me, there is the system of apps themselves, which is not an ecosystem in my mind, and the larger, living system of the apps, their users, and wider society, which really does in my mind merit the term "ecosystem". If we call the interrelated system of apps the "ecosystem", what word can we use for that wider system?

Also, there's something in the word "ecosystem" that goes well with living things, but not just with software. (Unless there's an awful lot of AI, perhaps 😃 )

in regards to OAE / OAP / Ecosystem etc....
I like 'ecosystem'.

Wikipedia: An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system.

imho the OAE is an ecosystem because it is:

A community of Apps (not exactly "living organisms" in the true sense of the words, but they will always be evolving, so it's a neat analogy) which work together (with the resources on which they depend: servers, tech stack etc AND the users, wider society etc) as an interacting system.

@asimong I think it might get a bit complex if we try to name the 'wider system' AND 'the apps'. To me the wider system IS the OAE and the apps are, well, the apps!

:)

Yes, agreed with @olisb that the wider system is the OAE, and the apps are the pieces of technology designed to play a facilitating / enabling role in this ecosystem.

I'm perfectly happy with that, provided that people don't start calling the set of apps by themselves the "ecosystem". Why that matters to me is that it invites a reading as techno-centric rather than human-centric, as if the humans aren't part of the ecosystem — while, to me, they are far and away the most important part of the ecosystem.

@asimong you seem to be missing the point that the apps also need to work together, as do the people who are working on the apps, at least enough to make the apps work together.

Then there are all the people and organizations who use the apps, and it would be good if they all collaborated as much as possible, too.

Sure, naturally one of the main points is that the apps work together — that's what we are happy to discuss under the headings of vocabularies, standards, interoperability.

Surely also, though, it is essential rather than just desirable that the apps facilitate people working together.

The proposal to Launch the CTA is going to close in 20 hours, it would be great if you could vote here: https://www.loomio.org/p/B1aEHyc3/lets-re-launch-the-cta
Or comment below... "together we are stronger" :)

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Forgive me if I forgot anyone, or mentioned anyone twice... I'm simply trying to make the decision on the Launch the CTA proposal as inclusive as possible, if you know anyone else who would be interested in having their say please invite them to the party!

I'm hesitant to express a position on this proposal while the document is still so fluid. Minor details, fine, but I do think we have some fairly major unresolved issues. Happy to take a position when the document is closer to finalisation.