Collab.Net this week finished its
beta test phase and has moved into production with sourceXchange, a
marketplace that enables open source developers to match their talents to
committed buyers.
sourceXchange hopes to provide software companies with a
professionally managed site where they can tap into the open source
community’s talent and expertise.
Hewlett-Packard was SourceXchange’s founding sponsor and beta test
partner, as well as the first to add a set of requests for Proposals into the sourceXchange database. Since then, four of those RFPs have been
picked up as projects, and one has already been completed. HP’s first
project was a test suite framework for the Apache web server that was
finished within six weeks at a cost of $5000, building on top of an
existing open source testing tool. Recently, three additional HP RFPs were
presented to the sourceXchange development community, supporting HP’s
recently announced open source e-speak software.
The beta phase enabled Collab.Net to make improvements to sourceXchange
which streamlined the project definition, bidding, execution, and
communication processes. These changes include:
- an interactive, graphical tool that guides the sponsors and the
developers through the sourceXchange process
- on-line guidelines and templates for generating sponsor RFPs
- context sensitive help on every page on the site
- improved categorization of developer RFP responses
- improved security access levels for the sponsor and developer teams
- enhanced communication features to coordinate the sponsor and the
developer communities
- a broadening of the site’s capabilities to enable international
developers to participate in the sourceXchange process