Program Aggregation Layer / How we wrap and deploy solution harmonize licenses for Cust * Com

Session Topic: PAL: Program Aggregation Layer: Interoperability of

Tuesday 1E

Convener: Kenneth Lefkowitz, Emmett Global

Notes-taker(s): Notes-taker(s): Kenneth Lefkowitz

Many solutions are available in this innovative space. The innovations and services are labeled with names such as tracker blocker, ad blocker, personal data store, personal cloud, authentication scheme, authorization scheme, intent- casting, life management platform, trust network, etc. Solutions are more or less interoperable depending on their API (eg JSON), base paradigm, data structure, and communication protocols.

People at the session were very interested in
 * Identifying best of breed solutions
 * Integrating the various solutions
 * APIs
 * making services pipe-able, such as bash on the linux command line
 * the ability to script the above pipe
 * content addressability

Emmett Global discussed their process for identifying candidates for inclusion in the PAL, a collection of solutions meeting the goal of a simple, one-click set of services and data stores that enables fast, safe internet surfing. The process works like this
 * Clarifying the requirement
 * Searching for candidates
 * Examining the license and business model of the candidate
 * Examining the code base
 * Assessing integrity of the community, last updates, who are the "star" or lead developers
 * reading reviews of users

Besides the above metrics, the software can also be assessed by more complex and nuanced qualities. Emmett uses "CANDOR" as its guide, an acronym for qualitative values Consent, Attribution, Notification, Dignity and ongoing Remuneration. To assess these, we recommend an A/B comparative process. While it is almost impossible to define "dignity", people have a remarkable consensus when presented with two choices A and B, and asked to rate which one accords more "dignity" to the user than the other.

In discussion, the following points were raised:
 * The aggregating organization should make explicit the taxonomy of requirements
 * Terms of Service need to be considered
 * an innovation incubator is a good setting to test these kinds of integration