Let's go 'The Code-sharing' way!

NEW DELHI: Avalanche Corporate Technology Cooperative is the brainchild of seven companies in the Minneapolis-area that have got together and hosted an online database of code that can be shared amongst them. Said an online report.

Companies like Best Buy, Cargill, and Medtronic have put in the system for collaborative software development and is building up a database of code on the Web site Collabnet.com. Said the report.

Code contributed to Avalanche is made available to its members under a special Avalanche license. According to Avalanche CEO Jay Hansen, this is an experiment to see whether companies can share code, while protecting each other's intellectual property and other legal issues that can crop up due to code sharing. They want to reach the critical mass to achieve maximum value out of this approach, he added.

Other members of the cooperative include Imation, Nuvolution, Jostens, and Thomson Legal & Regulatory, a unit of Thomson Corp. Full members pay a $30,000 annual fee. Said the report.