[Pipet Users] Khoros and Cantata

J.W. Bizzaro jeff at bioinformatics.org
Fri Feb 9 22:13:58 EST 2001


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
--




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