Overview

Collaborative software is a ample abstraction that abundantly overlaps with Computer-supported accommodating plan (CSCW). Some authors altercate they are equivalent. According to Carstensen and Schmidt (1999)2 groupware is allotment of CSCW. The authors affirmation that CSCW, and thereby groupware addresses "how collaborative activities and their allocation can be accurate by agency of computer systems". Software articles such as email, calendaring, argument chat, wiki, and bookmarking accord to this category, whenever acclimated for accumulation work, admitting the added accepted appellation amusing software applies to systems acclimated alfresco the workplace, for example, online dating casework and amusing networking sites like Friendster, Twitter and Facebook. It has been appropriate that Metcalfe's law — the added humans who use something, the added admired it becomes — applies to these types of software.

The use of collaborative software in the workspace creates a collaborative alive ambiance (CWE). A collaborative alive ambiance supports humans in both their alone and accommodating plan appropriately giving bearing to a new chic of professionals, e-professionals, who can plan calm irrespective of their bounded location.

Finally collaborative software relates to the angle of collaborative plan systems which are conceived as any anatomy of animal alignment that emerges any time that accord takes place, whether it is academic or informal, advised or unintentional.3 Admitting the groupware or collaborative software pertains to the abstruse elements of computer accurate accommodating work, collaborative plan systems become a advantageous analytic apparatus to accept the behavioral and authoritative variables that are associated to the broader abstraction of CSCW.4

editOrigins

See also: MUD

Doug Engelbart aboriginal envisioned collaborative accretion in 1951 Doug Engelbart - Father of Groupware, accurate his eyes in 1962,5 with alive prototypes in abounding operational use by his analysis aggregation by the mid 1960s,6 and captivated the aboriginal accessible affirmation of his plan in 1968 in what is now referred to as "The Mother of All Demos."7 The afterward year, Engelbart's lab was absorbed into the ARPANET, the aboriginal computer network, enabling them to extend casework to a broader userbase. See aswell Intelligence Amplification Section 4: Douglas Engelbart, ARPANET Section on ARPANET Deployed, and the Doug Engelbart Archive Collection.

Online collaborative gaming software began amid aboriginal networked computer users. In 1975 by Will Crowther created Colossal Cave Adventure on a DEC PDP-10 computer. As internet access grew, so did the numbers of users and multi-user games. In 1978 Roy Trubshaw, a apprentice at Essex University in the UK, created the bold MUD (Multi-User Dungeon). A amount of added MUDs were created, but remained a computer science change until the backward 1980s, if claimed computers with dial-up modems began to be added accepted in homes, abundantly through the use of multi-line Bulletin Board Systems and online account providers.

Parallel to development of MUDs were applications for online chat, video administration and articulation over IP. These would be capital for added development. Studies at MITRE showed the amount of articulation and argument chat, and administration pictures for aggregate understanding.

The US Government began application absolutely collaborative applications in the aboriginal 1990s.8 One of the aboriginal able-bodied applications was the Navy's Accepted Operational Modeling, Planning and Simulation Strategy (COMPASS).9 The COMPASS arrangement accustomed up to 6 users created point-to-point access with one another; the collaborative affair alone remained while at atomic one user backward active, and would accept to be recreated if all six logged out. MITRE bigger on that archetypal by hosting the collaborative affair on a server that anniversary user logged into. Called the Collaborative Basic Workstation (CVW), this accustomed the affair to be set up in a basic book chiffonier and basic rooms, and larboard as a assiduous affair that could be abutting later.10 In 1996, Pavel Curtis, who had congenital MUDs at PARC, created PlaceWare, a server that apish a one-to-many auditorium, with ancillary babble amid "seat-mates", and the adeptness to allure a bound amount of admirers associates to speak. In 1997, engineers at GTE acclimated the PlaceWare engine in a bartering adaptation of MITRE's CVW, calling it InfoWorkSpace (IWS). In 1998, IWS was called as the aggressive accepted for the connected Air Operations Center.11 The IWS artefact was awash to Accepted Dynamics and again after to Ezenia.12

editPhilosophical Underpinnings

See also: Basic Teams

Technology has continued been acclimated to accompany humans together. However, as ambit increases, rules and protocols charge to be implemented. One seminal book on the action of alive calm from a ambit is 'Virtual Teams' by Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps