While pondering structural computing, I stumbled on something called
"Ectropic Software" and found a page with a paper.
From the paper:
"Imagine hundreds of people working on the same program at the same
time. Imagine if those people do not
know each other and, in fact, do not individually have overall
knowledge of the program but merely want to adapt it
in order to solve their own particular problems. Imagine each of them
being able to contribute their fixes and
enhancements to the program while sharing the same code base.
This is the vision of the Open Source movement, responsible for such
popular software as the Apache web
server and the emacs text editor. However, Open Source suffers from
two limitations: the inherent nature of all
evolving software to lose its design coherence over time and the
specific reliance of Open Source on a central
individual to coordinate the evolution of the software.
Ectropic software is an attempt to leverage the advantages of Open
Source while overcoming the disadvantages.
Ectropy is the inverse of entropy. Ectropic software evolves over time to
become more highly structured and better able to accomplish the goals of
its users. It consists of two key ideas: Ectropic Design is a design
method by which order and structure are created out of the efforts of
multiple, unrelated software developers. An Ectrospace is an active
collaboration space to support Ectropic Design."
Ectropic Design (feature-oriented design) enforces conceptual integrity
during distributed development. Development emerges not from a
predetermined and static design description, but from continual accretion
of new features.
Well, it's not all that simple, but the paper is worth reading.
A homepage for ectropic software is http://www.cc.gatech.edu/ectropic/
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