PurpleWiki is derived from UseModWiki, by Clifford A. Adams.

It is inspired by the granular addressability present in the Augment
system developed by Doug Engelbart and his associates.

The original creation of PurpleWiki was done by Chris Dent and
Eugene Eric Kim as part of Blue Oxen Associates efforts to create
a collaborative environment. Major changes since then have been the
result of the occasional serendipitous bright bulbs going off 
in their heads. History of such things can be found in the development
mailing list:

  http://purplewiki.blueoxen.net/forums/devel/

and on their blogs:

  http://www.burningchrome.com:8000/~cdent/mt/
  http://www.eekim.com/blog/

Since then valuable contributions of all sorts have come from:

Danny Ayers
Jonathan Cheyer
Jason Cook
David Fannin
Matthew O'Connor
John Sechrest

If you should be on this list, please contact devel@purplewiki.blueoxen.net
and say so.
