ANNOUNCEMENT: FIPA-OS v1.1.0 released

Hi FIPA-OS developers,

Over the 3 months since the last release of FIPA-OS, our development effort has focused on addressing the main issues discussed on the mailing list: further simplification of the installation process, and improvements to the documentation. Please find a feature summary for the new release below, together with a brief look at what's coming next.

Since the last release a number of research projects have started to extend FIPA-OS. Details of these projects will be posted on the FIPA-OS web site shortly, but in the interim we are please to announce the following projects:

- HTTP Transport Support - Ion Constantinescu and Steve Willmott, EPFL
- Mobility Support - Milla Makelainen, Nottingham Trent University
- Agent Authentication - Christos Stergiou and Stefan Poslad, Imperial College

We hope to see the results of these development initiatives in a future release of FIPA-OS, you can track the progress of these and others via the mail list. We would also like to encourage new developers to join us in this open source (royalty free) initiative, and help ensure that FIPA-OS supports the features required by all of the agent developers using the toolkit. If you have ideas for the future of FIPA-OS then please propose them on the list - take advantage of the FIPA-OS community.

The new download can be found on the FIPA-OS home pages at
http://nortelnetworks.com/fipa-os

Thanks for all the comments and contributions, please keep sending your input to help ensure that the quality of FIPA-OS continues to improve over time.

-Phil Buckle, Rob Hadingham
26th April 2000
---------------
Version 1.1.0 Feature Summary

- Automatic installation and platform configuration
- Works straight out of the box
- Platform configured to run on a single host
- No third party software required
- Installs on Windows, UNIX, and Linux
- Example agents and tutorial instructions
- Numerous bug fixes and feature enhancements

STOP PRESS!
Version 1.2.0 of FIPA-OS will be available in May.
The features under development include:

- Additional Agent "Shell" that provides hooks to JESS (Java Expert System Shell http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov/jess/\).
- Support for the FIPA-CCL content language (Choice Constraint Language http://liawww.epfl.ch/CCL/\).
- Additional Agent "Shell" that provides hooks to the JCL constraint satisfaction engine (Java Constraint Library, see http://liawww.epfl.ch/~torrens/JCL/ for more details).
- 'Agent Loader' script utility to enable automatic instantiation of multiple agents in a single VM.