By Rachel Chalmers
The way companies develop software could be about to change. O’Reilly & Associates and Hewlett Packard Co have introduced SourceXchange, a web-based service that links corporate sponsors with open source development projects. The companies plan to launch the service in July with seed projects funded by HP. If all goes well with these betas, other enterprise sponsors will be encouraged to sign up. HP came to us with a challenge, explained Brian Behlendorf, O’Reilly & Associates chief technology officer and one of the founders of the open source web server, Apache. They wanted to further the development of specific open source software projects, but they needed a better way to reach out to the wider developer community and coordinate the development process.
SourceXchange was put together under Behlendorf’s direction. It maintains a database of all published project Requests for Proposals (RFPs) posted by corporate sponsors. Developers and their teams are registered with the site, which manages RFP responses from the community and arranges payment for developers. SourceXchange will also incorporate peer review and project milestones to help ensure quality and reliability. For the sponsors, SourceXchange could provide the outsourcing option they need to extend software development resources and budgets. For developers the benefit is even more clear. SourceXchange provides a change to work on open source projects for cash!
The process begins when a sponsor needs some open source code written for a particular purpose: a device driver, a Perl utility or an Apache module would be ideal. The sponsor registers with SourceXchange and agrees to shoulder development costs. Now the sponsor needs to create an RFP and submit it to the SourceXchange web site. Internal peer reviewers will look over the RFP and work with the sponsor to refine it, if necessary. Next, the SourceXchange administrator posts the RFP to the site. A set comment period follows before the RFP is closed.
Finally, developers who have registered at no cost to themselves will be invited to become active developers and respond to the RFP. A lead developer may work alone or recruit a team from the registered developer pool. The sponsor and a peer reviewer will look over the proposals and the sponsor will select one to accept. Development gets under way. The sponsor and peer reviewer keep track of milestones; the lead developer is paid as each milestone is achieved and approved. When the project is complete, SourceXchange elicits feedback from all participants. The organizers promise to use this feedback to improve the process. Source code will be published under an appropriate open source license and the whole process will be archived for future reference, helping minimize the need to reinvent the wheel.
All too often a great idea will come up while developing Apache and disappear because there is no one with the time to work on it, Behlendorf says. Likewise, I’ve seen lots of companies asking for new features or ideas, willing to pay for the work, but without the personnel to help make it happen. So there’s this tremendous ‘potential energy’ building up, keeping a lot of useful code from being written, and many of us thought this was a problem worth fixing. If SourceXchange can indeed unite the open source development community with the resources of enterprise software vendors, the problem will be well and truly solved.
