The initiative started with a small core group in the autumn of 2005 that explored both the organizational and technical structure of OSF to look for improvements that could be made.
The working group met by way of web conference on a monthly basis and used an open-source collaboration tool known as Plone to share ideas and possible solutions.
In June 2006, the working group made a recommendation to OSF Senior Management to invest in the development of a global intranet and on-line collaboration system.
working closely with OSF without being subjected to restrictive licensing fees and requiring users to install special software.
As KARL attracted interest, the OSF took steps to move KARL1 off of the Windows platform, in preparation for making an open source version.