IT-Director: The Open Source Exchange [sourceXchange]: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

“Innovation is one of the reasons why we believe that the Open
Source movement is going to be a force to be reckoned with for many
years to come. The Open Source market is proving to be very
innovative. One recent development that has caught our eye is the
founding of a genuine “labour exchange” for open source developers
where companies can post RFPs and open source developers or Open
Source VARs can respond to them. The sourceXchange was set up late
last year by Collab.net which itself was only founded in July of
1999.”

“The motivation for creating sourceXchange was created as a
response to the fact that many organisations were completely
unexperienced in contracting open source developments and there was
clearly a need to facilitate this if the Open Source movement was
going to continue to grow. Although it has only been in
operation for a handful of months, sourceXchange has already
attracted about 1500 developers, has seen two projects complete and
has initiated a further 15 open source projects.”

“The latest innovation by Collab.net is to allow developers to
come up with ideas for open source projects themselves and post
them under a “Wishes Section” to see if they can get sponsorship
for them. Collab.Net has promised to review the list regularly and
sponsor several projects itself. Sponsors can volunteer if they see
something that would be of use to them and ultimately it will be
made available as Open Source after the project is completed.”

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