Pipers, I don't think I mentioned Khoros directly on this list. Although I have seen a number of references to it, I never bothered to look at it :-P I turns out that Khoros, with the Cantata visual shell, is probably the closest thing to Piper I have yet seen (with DX, AVS, OpenBSA, and ISYS next in line) . Here is an excerpt from a message by Ed Hall back in 1999: ---------------------------------------- There was a system developed starting back in the mid-1980's at UNM called "Khoros" that did statistical and signal processing using a "visual shell" called "Cantata." It's an incredibly powerful environment that allowed the construction of highly complex processes via the interconnection and manipulation of block icons. It once was free software (it was developed at public expense, so it was required to be). Over the years it has been commercialized, unfortunately (a good argument for the (L)GPL, to be sure). But it's still free for academic use--check out www.khoral.com--under a highly restrictive license that somehow managed to placate the original funders. It might be worth a look. It runs under Linux... ---------------------------------------- Indeed, Khoros is being sold by Khoral, although it seems only within the last couple years: http://www.khoral.com/products/products.html You may find the white paper an amazing read, considering the concepts are those we developed independently for Piper: http://www.khoral.com/ideas/technology/cantata.pdf So, if Khoros is much older, I guess we can say that Piper is like an Open Source Khoros work-alike :-) But I think we can continue to innovate, improve upon the concepts, and add features, like contemporary P2P capabilities. Cheers. Jeff -- J.W. Bizzaro jeff at bioinformatics.org Director, Bioinformatics.org: The Open Lab http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff "All those scientists--they're all alike! They say they're working for us, but what they really want is to rule the world!" -- Angry Villager, Young Frankenstein --