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Ideas

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distributed software company

Submitted by: nitro
Created: Nov 2, 2007, 7:41 pm

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The Idea

An open pool of software developers / engineers / consultant / project managers (we refer to them as nodes). that are connected via an online network (think of a professional social network).
The goal is to build a virtual software factory in which teams being formed on the fly based on node's skills, history, ratings, location, availability, price and connections inside network. This can be automated or done via a project manager.

Now let say you need a piece of software, you register, submit a initial project spec and click a button to generate a team, each team member will send back an acknowledgment, and a project management site will be created .. the project manager start assigning the task.. etc.

I thought of this idea when I was...

I work for a software company and also have contributed to a few open source projects...
This is a way to evolve the current systems to something better...

Comments Posted

siddey Posted: November 3, 2007, 6:40 am

So am I correct in thinking that the value this service offers above something like odesk.com, comes from team members being automatically selected based upon their suitability for a role and a project manager would also automatically be engaged as the one responsible for getting the team up and running?

Can you elaborate a little more on why this is more effective than say manually searching for a project manager and developers using the existing search capabilities on any of the popular freelance resource sites?

vanhees Posted: November 6, 2007, 1:16 am

Id also like to know more, and how you differ from other compagnies.
Tommy

techiewaves Posted: November 8, 2007, 7:42 pm

Interesting idea. I would also like to know more, in terms of how would you manage the development process including source code, licensing issues and what not!

siddey Posted: November 8, 2007, 10:51 pm

Nitro - any comments?

Goosie Posted: November 9, 2007, 5:04 pm

mmmm, windy here.

nitro Posted: November 10, 2007, 12:08 pm

Thanks everyone for your comments...

Well, I am still thinking about the details, myself :)

I know there might be too much overlap between this idea and the already existing outsourcing models.. but I think they are fundamentally different...So here are some thoughts and my rationale behind this idea:

- software = developers + communication/collaboration
- the key is communication... putting together a team of developers that can really work together and be productive is not an easy task... that's why i think we don't have a fully distributed development model already...
- Since we keep record of all the projects done, people, stats, ratings, etc. the team building engine consider all the factors in making the teams.
- The idea is to put together a reusable software company that can dynamically reorganize itself to fulfill the needs of different projects...

Think of a FPGA chip as opposed to a CPU

arthaus Posted: November 10, 2007, 9:58 pm

Google has an open source project program going on. You can find coders anywhere. Honestly, doesn't seem to be something that is needed, especially since there are a lot of existing people doing this. However, I have yet to find an organized one (as of yet, to my knowledge the Google Open Source project doesn't have a way of finding coders, etc).

PhilipH Posted: November 13, 2007, 4:51 am

Seems like there would be no shortage of projects to work on, given that the majority of CH ideas are in some way software-based!

CyberCerberus Posted: November 13, 2007, 9:22 pm

I'm not 100% sure this could work, but I like the spirit of it, and the general idea. Especially compared to some of the OTHER ideas this round...

Daggahead Posted: November 20, 2007, 1:57 pm

Isn't this sort of the point of Sourceforge?

Hello!

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