A major shortcoming of MPS is that it requires client-side installation of a large Java application. In line with the general trend to move systems into the (public or private) cloud, it is clearly necessary to start down this path for MPS as well.
As many of you might know, itemis, and in particular Sascha Lisson, has been experimenting in this direction for a while. He has built prototypes that bring existing MPS editors into the browser, render models as HTML and that use a database-backed storage with operational-transform for collaborative editing. All run MPS on the server to handle model processing.
As a next step, itemis is planning to open source the code for these prototypes and continue its further development as an open source project. The initial goal is to develop a Cloud MPS in the sense that MPS is required on the server, but editors are made available in browser. Longer term, the goal will likely evolve to replacing MPS with a new engine, roughly in line with the Active Repository that was proposed by Markus Voelter and discussed in the community for a while.
At this point itemis is reaching out to those individuals and organizations who might want to contribute to this effort. If you feel addressed and are interested in participating, just send me a short e-mail. Assuming there’s interest, itemis will decide the project infrastructure and decide on the licensing of the code.
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