The first agent framework we explored was [http://www.emorphia.com/research/about.htm FIPAOS].
It is somewhat heavy-weight, relying on speech-act communication protocols and communication languages (acl),
including a family of Semantic Languages (sl0, sl1,...).  To become proficient in these would have required
significant effort.  No on saw enough payoff to proceed with this package or any other FIPA based package
(e.g. [http://jade.cselt.it/ Jade]).

Another drawback of [http://www.emorphia.com/research/about.htm FIPAOS] is the preference for using a GUI
to start agents.  It may be possible to start the initial agents without using a GUI,
and have agents start other agents, but this does not seem to be part of the expected usage.

So we began to explore other agent packages.

The [http://cougaar.org/ Cougaar] package did not seem to require investment in speech-acts and semantic languages.
However, Cougaar does require MySQL dayabase support.  That is another learning experience for most of the people
involved.
 
The [http://diet-agents.sourceforge.net/Index.html DIET Agents] package claims to be lightweight.
It does not require speach-acts or any semantic language.  No database either!

[http://jade.tilab.com/index.html Jade] is an FIPA conforming agent framework.  It has a more active user community than either FIPAOS or DIET.  Both Jade and DIET use behavior plugins.