[mphillips]

OT is not so much an algorithm as an approach: a way of thinking about sensibly merging parallel sequences of change operations against a data model of some kind.

It’s a really interesting field, going back a long way: the canonical paper that the Google Wave (RIP) people referenced is nearly 20 years old (http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=215585.215706). This is another, more recent, good paper: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/13/97/04/PDF/OsterIC....

In fact, Basis does use an OT approach in the delta merge algorithm: it breaks the deltas down into a canonical series of “micro operations”, merges them piecewise, then generates a new delta.

Thanks for the kudos!