The Change Mariner

Project Avalanche: Corporate "Open Source"

WSJ.com - Portals:

[Project] Avalanche is a legally constituted intellectual-property cooperative. Companies pay $30,000 a year to become members. They can then donate any in-house software they choose to the Avalanche library, with the project becoming the legal owner of the code. Project members get to use, free of charge, any of the other programs in the library.

...

Because large corporations like those in Avalanche are the biggest customers of software companies, any shift like this would have enormous repercussions. The last thing any company wants is to have its customers banding together.

As residents of Minnesota, Mr. Black and Mr. Lien know their snow, and they say the name of their project was carefully chosen. An avalanche isn't only unstoppable, it also either buries everything in its path or carries everything along. Software companies may soon be needing to choose their fate.

Posted by Timothy Fredel at April 15, 2004 01:33 PM | TrackBack
Related Categories: Industry - Software | Quadrant - Technological

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