It has been argued that competitive necessities will increasingly require OSS companies to participate in cooperative business networks in order to offer the complete product/service (whole product) demanded by customers. It is envisaged that these business networks will enhance the business models of participant firms by supplementing their value-adding activities and increasing responsiveness...

We give an interpretation of quotient types within in a dependent type theory with an impredicative universe of propositions (Calculus of Constructions). In the model, type dependency arises only at the propositional level, therefore universes and large eliminations cannot be interpreted. In exchange, the model is much simpler and more intuitive than the one proposed by the author in 10]. Moreo...

Triggers (active rules) bring domain-specific reactive behavior to databases. Traditional Event-Condition-Action triggers use only crisp concepts. In this paper, fuzzy triggers are proposed whereby approximate reasoning may be integrated with a traditional crisp database. The new approach paves the way for intuitive expression of application semantics of imprecise nature in database-bound appli...

In this paper, we investigate set Input to State Stability (set-ISS) in the context of multi-agent systems, specifically when agent interaction is spatial in nature. We review the definition of Input-to-State (ISS) Lyapunov functions with respect to sets, from which we provide a structural formulation of set-ISS that accommodates the local and per-agent nature of interacting systems. We argue t...

The notion of information infrastructures, introduced in the 1990s and refined during the past ten years, has proven quite fruitful to the IS field. It changed the perspective from organizations to networks and from systems to infrastructures, allowing for a global and emergent perspective on information systems. However, something is missing in this theory. What is an information infrastructur...

The idea that people can entertain propositions without believing them is widespread, intuitive, and most probably false. The main goal of this essay is to argue against the claim that people can entertain a proposition without believing it. Evidence is presented demonstrating that we cannot withhold assent from any proposition we happen to consider. A model of belief fixation is then sketched ...

There are two ways of incorporating temporal distinctions into a system of logic: tensed theories propose to expand standard logic with intensional tense operators; tenseless theories try to make do with the resources of extensional first-order logic, by using quantification over suitably chosen temporal entities, such as metaphysically basic time points or temporal parts. My concern in this pa...

Le programme d'analyse~ dont nous allons d~finir ici une partie, fait partie d'un programme de traduction automatique de l'allemand en d'autres langues choisies ~ volont~. Nous prendrons pour base une forme du programme id~alis~e, qui sans consideration de la capacit~'limit~e de l'ordinateur explique toutes les differences des constructions allemandes entre elles. De cette mani~re on dolt regar...