plans
Bruce D'Arcus
For those that don't know me, I'm an assistant professor of geography
(think social history, cultural studies sort of stuff), co-project
lead for the OpenOffice bibliographic project, and the developer of
the Citation Style Language (CSL) Zotero is using. Finally, I'm also
on the OpenDocument Technical Committee, working on adding
state-of-the-art metadata and citation support to the format.
This list has been pretty dead, so I thought I'd try to get some
discussion going by laying out some suggestions to take Zotero to the
next level. I think right now the project needs to become more open
than has been. I realize the Zotero has been busy with the first
releases, but now seems like a good time to discuss next steps,
Suggestions, then:
1) Zotero needs a public code repository and issue tracker, and ought
to encourage the active coding participation of outside contributors.
Not sure how best to do this (central repository with commit rights,
or distributed with easy patch submission), but I don't think telling
people to look in their profiles for the code is a very sustainable
approach.
2) I suggest too public documentation and discussion of
implementation plans for the next steps (remote syncing, word
processor integration, etc.).
There are various reasons for this. First, greater participation from
different parties will lead to a better Zotero. Second, such
discussion will likely lead to an enhanced ecosystem of tools in this
space (beyond Zotero). Finally, and this is me being a little
paranoid, it publicly documents the sort of things that companies can
and will try to patent. ISI is working on a web version of Endnote,
for example, and I'm pretty sure they'll be applying for patents
related to that. Public documentation is prior art.
3) As the author of CSL, I've been repeatedly saying we need to have
a conversation of how to put the infrastructure in place to really
have it flourish. This means one or more public repositories of
styles, maybe using syndication feeds to update people and tools, and
ultimately a really nice Web 2.0 style editing interface. Put simply,
we need to get to a place where users -- from multiple projects --
never have to think about the arcane details of citaiton styles; they
should just be available onn demand.
But this conversation hasn't really happened. Why not here, then?
Bruce
Raymond Yee
Speaking as as one of the members of the advisory board to the Zotero
project and as an avid fan of the project, I would have to agree with
Bruce's suggestions that we get some conversation around development
plans going. I look forward to a time soon when the Zotero developers
aren't so swamped so that they more actively participate in public
discussions such as this one.
I just want to pick up on the issue of patents and prior art. I would
say that yes, we need to document our designs and our thoughts in a
very public way as insurance against those who would want to colonize
this area of work with patents. I don't think one can be too paranoid
concerning patents.
To that end, I am hoping that the Zotero team will start posting even
an outline of some of the great thoughts and plans that I know they
have. Let's make sure that we cover the waterfront on all the aspects
we can think of to make sure that no one starts to patent up what
really are basic ideas.
-Raymond
Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
> Hi All,
Bruce D'Arcus
> I just want to pick up on the issue of patents and prior art. I would
> say that yes, we need to document our designs and our thoughts in a
> very public way as insurance against those who would want to colonize
> this area of work with patents. I don't think one can be too paranoid
> concerning patents.
Yes. The more I learn about patents in this country, the more I think
a little paranoia is good on these matters. And the best way to guard
against problems there is to do everything out in the open, as early
as possible.
Bruce