How does Avalanche compare to open-source software? Does it work similarly?
Well, we are calling it shared source. We are making open source safe for corporations, if you will. So you can kind of think of Avalanche as a gated community, where the assets in there are both owned by and shared by the members.
Don't your members worry about getting entangled in an intellectual-property dispute a la SCO and IBM?
One of the major new ideas from an intellectual-property standpoint that Avalanche does is makes it safe for corporations to share [intellectual property], with Avalanche taking on the role of the broker in the centre that provides IP protection.
How do you do that?
We worked with Dorsey & Whitney, one of the Ivy League IP law firms. Obviously it was something we thought pretty hard about. Between the legal process and the subscriber agreements, we really are designed to keep issues such as the SCO-IBM battle out of our worry zone.
How do you make sure that software your members check in is not based on a commercial software product?
Yeah, it is a great question. We have got as part of the check-in process, a software tool that sort of grants clear title. It has a library of IP and it takes a look at the source code that is coming in much like a title search for a home. It will check and make sure that the source code does not have some prominence, some place else that we do not own or the corporations do not own. Obviously you cannot contribute software that you purchased from Oracle, SAP or IBM. The focus here would be around custom-developed applications that corporations have built.
So will the members of Avalanche try to build an open-source, or shared-source, customer relationship management system or enterprise resource management system -- like those sold by SAP and Siebel Systems?
We would never say never, but it is sure not where we are starting.
