Open Source, Standards and Scaleable Agencies

Stefan Poslad, Phil Buckle, and Rob Hadingham

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2001)

Numerous agencies and agent systems have been developed as vehicles to deliver novel types of e-commerce services to users. However service agents in one agency are often unable to interoperate or co-operate with agents from another vendor's agency. Clearly, standardization in this area would help to create a more ubiquitous market and supporting infrastructure for agent-based services. We analyze the relevant standards for agents, highlighting the FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) agent standards. Standard specifications ought to be grounded within a practical framework, which provides a reference implementation for developers and users. We also highlight the importance of open agent systems and open source implementations and their role in seeding the market for agent technology.