Collaboration, literally, consists of working together with one or more others. See collaborative software, consensus.

Although the term collaboration is widely used in many varying contexts such as education, science, art and business, very little research has been carried out to discover this process’ properties. With the relatively recent advent of computer mediated communication (CMC), the nature of collaboration is coming under more intensive scrutiny. As software designers, facilitators and theorists from many diverse fields strive to create more useful and effective collaborative environments and methods, more light is shown on this ubiquitous and taken for granted practice. However, what light is being cast is still fairly refracted into the diverse fields in which the research is being carried out. Perhaps more collaboration into the nature of collaboration will be required to answer such questions as:

• How does collaboration differ from cooperation? (dictionary definitions are generally more or less equivalent)
• What qualifies as a collaboration? (is Wikipedia a collaboration in the same way that a work of art is when two artist collaborate face-to-face? and for that matter, does a family, city, nation or species qualify?)
• What are the defining principals or elements of this process? (understanding these might help to draw conclusions on the previous questions)

Etymology: Dating from 1871, collaboration is a back-formation from collaborator (1802), from Fr. collaborateur, from L. collaboratus, past participle of collaborare "work with," from com- "with" + labore "to work."

Wartime collaboration

As a pejorative term, the word "collaboration' can describe the treason of cooperating with enemy forces occupying one's country. Collaboration "traitorous cooperation with the enemy," dates from 1940, originally in reference to the Vichy Government of France.

During World War II, those accused of collaboration with Axis Powers included:

• Vidkun Quisling (Norway)
• The Ustaše (Croatia)
• The government of Vichy France
• Leopold III of Belgium (found innocent)
• Anton Mussert (Netherlands)
• Milan Nedić (Serbia)
• Jozef Tiso (Slovakia)
• Pierre Laval (France)
• P. G. Wodehouse (only informally accused)
• companies like Philips and Van Doorne's Automobiel Fabriek (DAF) in the Netherlands continued their business with the Germans as usual, though the Phillips company for one tried to be as unproductive as they could get away with!

See also

• Puppet government
• Resistance movements
• Wikipedia's Collaboration of the week

External links

• State Collaboration Collaboration of Vichy France with Nazi Germany.
• Collaborative On-Line Learning and Research