OPEN SOURCE
The bleary-eyed, code-swapping software developer is the ghost of open source past. The present belongs to people like Bob Young, cofounder of Red Hat, and Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, who last June sold his open source news and community site, Slashdot (www.slashdot.org), to online IT network Andover.Net. But it's Brian Behlendorf who may offer a glimpse into open source's future.
As founder and president of Collab.Net (www.collab.net), Behlendorf is laying the groundwork for the next stage of open source. The company's first service, sourceXchange, establishes an online marketplace for funding open source software projects. Companies post descriptions of the problem they're facing and how much they're willing to pay for a software solution; registered developers choose any project that interests them. Collab.Net has received funding from Benchmark Capital, and Hewlett-Packard has posted project requests.
"People used to get involved in open source projects because they were fun," says Behlendorf. "Now you can also make some money." He should know - he cofounded the Apache Software Foundation, which developed the code that runs nearly 60 percent of Web servers. For money, he was HotWired's chief engineer and cofounded Web design firm Organic. In February, he signed on as CTO of new ventures at O'Reilly &Associates, which spun off Collab.Net.
Behlendorf compares the state of open source to the Net circa 1993 - it's a phenomenon on the verge of becoming mainstream and profitable. Collab.Net's next project, codenamed Tigris, will launch the first hosting platform for open development. As Collab.Net and others build the open source future, codemasters will have more work than ever - this time, for pay.
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