Because what we current have does not satisfy the needs of the organizations that collaborating today and will collaborate tomorrow.

Collaboration is not a new subject and has been studied extensively in different industries. But the world today is very different then the world 15 years ago, 10 years ago and even 5 years ago.

Unfortunately, everything that exists today was designed to satisfy the needs of different organizations for the world that existed at least 5 years ago.

5 Years in today’s Internet based world is a very long time. The nature of online tools has changed dramatically in this period and will continue to change as the Internet continues to evolve into the future.

If we look at the tools that are available right now, we will find common threads.  The technology that they are based on and the reasons for their creation are very similar. The tools and the reasons themselves are different but they have the same themes.

For example, if you look at the comparison chart of wiki software on Wikipedia, you will find that every single wiki applications is either a proprietary hosted platform or is based on either a relational or a flat-file database. What this shows is that all of these solutions are essentially based on the same foundation. The thoughts are all different, but the nature of the thought is the same.

Because the nature of the tools that were used to create these platforms are all the same, they are all hindered by the same limitations. These are the architectural limitations that we experience today. They seep through the application and express themselves to the users.

For example, all hosted platforms suffer from the same problems – data silos with limited functionality and inflexible user interface.

Data silo is a problem that occurs on any hosted platform. In essence, the web service that the organization is using is hosting all of the data. The structure and organization of the information is left completely to the mercy of the web service developers. This has dire consequences because the web service controls access to your data and can actually lock you out of your own data.  A great example of this is when Google closes gmail accounts(1, 2) without explanation or when a government restricts access to gmail(1).

Limited functionality happens for many reasons. The most common reason is that the platform that contains the data has limited resources to implement functionality required by all users of the system. This is understandable, especially when the platform is being used by many different organizations with different needs. Even a development-monster like Google can not possibly satisfy the needs of all of their users, because if they could,  Suggest a Feature list would not exist. There are even some platform developers like 37 Signals, who take pride in building less. In fact, it’s in their manifesto. It’s their design philosophy. Their service is built on providing less.

Users are the once who experience the effects of the above limitations. They are the once who use the tools, and by accepting to use the tools bind themselves to the interfaces these tools provide. Let’s take Basecamp as an example, which is a tool that was designed for design agencies to interact with their clients. According to the Basecamp website, it is used by “tens of thousands of small businesses, agencies and entrepreneurs.” But what if one of these agencies would like to see their tasks presented in as a Gantt chart? Well, then the user is out of luck. (1)

The above issues were all illustrated with hosted platforms as examples, but the same issues apply to today’s Open Source platforms. Let’s take…

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