  This paper describes recent developments with the licas (lightweight
Internet-based communication for autonomic services) software package. In
particular, it describes how the architecture and functionality have changed
from the first version release. The autonomous nature of the system is focused
on, which requires independent behaviour and metadata descriptions of each
service. The system has now also been ported to the Java mobile environment.
Then some open questions or problems will be discussed in the areas of metadata
consistency, security and trust. Finally, some solutions to these problems will
also be suggested.
