pie

Oscar resells MagnaCare insurance, and they're not even the only ones on the NY exchange to do it. I wish they'd actually do something different in the insurance market, but Oscar is more of the same.

It's also worth checking out The Silver Searcher: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher

Another useful tool for working with spreadsheets in Javascript is SheetJS: https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx

For a hackable, open source collaborative framework, check out Mozilla's TogetherJS: https://togetherjs.com/

Judging by the chart on the site, it looks like each client polls the original model on the server, and infers changes by diffing it against the client's current copy.

The readme says it works with any "persistent backend such as a REST API or socket connection".

It looks like it tries to be backend-agnostic, and do the sync work on the client side.

I've talked with the Scratch team and I believe they went with Flash to serve the many schools with low-end machines and older browsers.

Yup, I've actually read all those papers, and then some. I think OT is often misunderstood and poorly documented, and really needs a solid go-to library. (Along with clear, accessible documentation.)

ShareJS and "Operational-Transformation" (used by Firepad) are decent, but in my opinion aren't general enough and may even have some algorithmic flaws.

And yes, it's time this was solved, and it wasn't necessary to re-implement the basics for every collaborative project.

Yes, and Wave is probably the most accurate open source picture of what Google is using for Docs: http://incubator.apache.org/wave/

OT works naturally with linear data structures, but is tougher to use correctly with more complex data, which Mozilla seems to have here with Towtruck.

I'm excited to see what approach they choose!

I am very curious to see what happens with this issue: https://github.com/mozilla/towtruck/issues/5

Given Mozilla's profile and resources, maybe they'll come up with a novel solution!

No approach to technology architecture is a "silver bullet," especially with a stack spread across client and server.

I always find myself returning to the "boring, old-fashioned" way of doing things (like server-side processing or relational databases) and these do indeed seem like the best choices for many applications.

But I don't see how this calls client-side MVC into question, except that perhaps it's considered as a default choice too often.