History

The evolution of OCE

Much work has been done on the OVN protocol and related specifications by many contributors too numerous to list here. An extremely brief history goes as follows- follow the links to learn more about the theory and concepts behind OVNs.

• Early 1980s: Bill McCarthy first defines Resource-Event-Agent (REA) model for accounting systems and publishes many papers on the topic.

• Mid 1990s: Bob Haugen commercially develops 'Quick Response Engine' & becomes interested in supply chain systems.

• 1995-2000: Bob discovers REA, he and Bill further develop REA as a semantic model for internet supply chain collaboration.

• 2000: Verna Allee coins the term "Value Network" to describe and model tangible & intangible economic value within organisations.

• 2002: ISO adopts REA as their economic and accounting ontology.

• 2005: Bob begins to write about the importance of expanding REA to cover ad-hoc networks of external economic entities.

• 2005-2011: Bob works closely with Lynn Foster under the name 'Mikorizal Software' on several open supply chain projects; targeting timber, food networks & fishing industries.

• 2012: Open hardware manufacturer Sensorica gets involved with REA and coins the term "Open Value Network" (OVN). They develop the Network Resource Planning (NRP) software in collaboration with Bob & Lynn. This is the first iteration of the software on which django-rea and its forks are based.

  • NRP system architecture presentation (mandatory reading!)

  • Value equations explainer

• 2013 - Joshua Vial of Enspiral proposes an Open App Ecosystem. Mikey Williams proposes a common method of

  inter-app communication which settles on Json-LD and Linked Open Data.

• 2014 - Lynn Foster, Elf Pavlik, Mikey Williams, and Jon Richter start the Value Flows project to develop a common vocabulary for apps in economic networks using Linked Open Data. Other people arrive and help, including Kalin Maldzhanski, Paul Mackay, and Elio Qoshi.

• 2016: Bill expands upon the concept of an Open Value Network, building on his prior REA model.

  • OVN / REA presentation slides

• Q1 2016: Sensorica's NRP software is forked by FreedomCoop and becomes OCP (Open Collaboration Platform). Many updates are made and integrations with digital currencies (FairCoin) begin.

• Q3 2016: Another fork of NRP is made by GoPacifica and further development continues on that project.

• 2016-2017 Lynn and Bob join with others to continue work on developing the REA ontology, incorporating learnings from prior projects & concepts, including NRP & OVN, as well as others. The project name is genericised to Valuefows and becomes focused on working towards common standards.

• Dec 2016: Valueflows team members discuss and outline requirements for a modular & community-centered design process around OVN-compatible apps.

• Q1 2017: Members from GoPacifica, FreedomCoop, Sensorica & Mikorizal begin to collaborate on unifying the multiple forks of NRP to a single generic codebase so that development effort can be shared.