[Pipet Users] Is Narval the AIL Piper may need ?

[Karl-Max Wagner]

> To get back to my previous point, I'd suggest forgetting about the current
> code base and write down a rather precise description of what we want
> Piper to do (you know, requirements :-). The ideas of piper nodes that
> publish their capabilities, P2P capabilities for communication and
> resource discovery, extending the principle of pipes, visual programming,
> etc. are the real goal(s) of Piper. It could be that choices were made
> when first merging the intial projects because anything else would have
> been impracticle (I'm thinking about the mapping one person / one layer
> here) and that those choices are actually not so good when we look at what
> we want to get to. (Again, I can't say for sure, one way or the other, so
> if someone has a clear opinion on that, please speak up).

To begin with, piper is a consortium of several projects with
pretty diverse goals and agendas that recognized that,
abstractly considered, they had very similar needs in a way.

Now that even more projects joined the consortium I think a good
beginning would be if each of the projects would write up some
presentation about its origins ( history ), goals and dreams.
Once we all know what everyone is aiming at, we can design a
framework that fits at least these requirements ( first draft ).
Then we can go ahead and generalize it even more so that me can
accommodate future projects with similar needs and goals.

It might also be good if everyone writes up a bit about himself:
we are a community with a rather extreme diversity of
backgrounds and it helps a lot to know from which side each of
us looks at things.

I propose that everyone prepares this stuff in HTMLized form,
bundles it up and submits it for having it put up somewhere on
the piper site. This is much more comprehensive than spattering
it all about the net.

> If you guys agree with me on this need of discussing and writing down the
> goals of the Piper Project before continuing further with the design,
> please give me (or Logilab, so that Alexandre can use it too. Name it
> after Narval's mascot: ornicar :-) an access to the CVS and I'll check in
> the very first version of that document so that we can all start building
> on it.

I think this should be the next step after everyone has laid
open what he is up to.

> If we were to build a web browser or some common piece of software, the
> roadmap would be crystal clear. Here we're dealing with something that
> looks like research, or at least pretty innovative stuff. If we don't have
> a clear understanding of others' ideas and do not share the same vision,
> chances are the road will be winding. Free software or not :-)

Chances are even that we fail. I could easily point to projects
that are not getting anywhere because they apparently stopped
understanding what they want to do.

In any project, the concept phase is the most important one.
Mistakes in the concept phase are from difficult to impossible
to correct in subsequent development. I have seen that only too
often. 

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        "It was hell. They knew it.          Karl-Max Wagner
          But they called it                 karlmax at oberland.net
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