451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
Stuart’s new gig
Raven Zachary, April 16, 2007 @ 9:16 am ETStuart Cohen, the former CEO of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), launched his new gig today – Collaborative Software Initiative (press release). Jay Lyman and I had the opportunity to sit down with Stuart last week and discuss his plans.
The new firm applies a collaborative software development model to commercial application development projects at a more favorable cost over standard outsourcing efforts. A systems integrator with a twist – a collection of end user organizations split the costs (plus profit to Collaborative Software Initiative) of building an application. Although this may seem like a consortium from the outside, it most definitely is a commercial effort, backed by venture funding from OVP Venture Partners. Stuart has assembled a diverse set of advisors, including Brian Behlendorf, Eben Moglen, Dan Frye, and others.
While at the OSDL, Stuart had ambitions to pursue open source activities outside of the organization’s core Linux focus. While he was not able to pursue these activities at the OSDL, the Collaborative Software Initiative is his new outlet for these pursuits.
Comments (2) Categories: Software
Idealx has tried his approach few years ago in France and failed. I wonder how mature users organizations are to agree on specs, schedule, use the same code rules, standards, …
Another initiative to note is done by http://www.openitworks.com
One interesting issue that may need consideration. Is there a risk of the collaborating enterprises being accused of illegal cartel activity? This is something that financial institutions I spoke to a while ago cited as a concern when I asked them why they didn’t pool resources to create some of the missing infrastructure software needed to make grid computing more practical in the financial sector.
Interesting also that there doesn’t appear to be any clear intention to make the result open source, that I can see. So perhaps the resulting code still will offer the participants some competitive edge over non-participants.