A Protocol for Building Consensual and Consistent Repositories

Distributed collaborative construction of a repository (e.g. knowledge base, document, design description) requires tools enforcing the consistency of the repository and the agreement of all the collaborators on the content of the repository. The CO4 protocol presented herein manages the communication between collaborators in order to maintain these properties on a hierarchy of repositories. It mimics the submission of articles to peer-reviewed journals (except that each change must be accepted by all the participants). The protocol is independent from the nature of the repository and is based on a restricted set of message types. The communication between collaborators is described through a set of rules. The protocol is live, fair and maintains a consistent repository consensual among the collaborators.