Startups - Collaborative Software Initiative receives $1 million in seed money from OVP Venture Partners  Tuesday, April 17, 2007 MIKE ROGOWAY

Oregon’s open source software community marked a milestone Monday with the first company from its ranks to win the backing of venture capitalists.  The startup, called Collaborative Software Initiative, aims to coordinate software development among corporations. It’s founded by Stuart Cohen, who resigned last year after four years as chief executive of the Open Source Development Labs in Beaverton. OVP Venture Partners, which has offices in Portland, has contributed more than $1 million in seed money to launch the new company. Collaborative Software Initiative, CSI, is currently housed in OVP’s Portland office. When Cohen left Open Source Development Labs, an industry consortium that recently merged with another group to become The Linux Foundation, he said he wanted to build his own company. He’s been secretive about his plans until now. 

CSI’s goal, Cohen said Monday, is to give companies an alternative to expensive in-house software development or project outsourcing. At times when multiple companies have similar needs for new software, CSI aims to contract with all of them to create software they all can use. “You share the expense. You share the risk. You share the reward,” Cohen said. “We do it using an open source methodology.” Open source software is open for users to inspect or modify to suit their needs. CSI will license the final product as open source, so companies will be able to see and change the underlying software code. CSI hopes to profit from the initial development work and from service contracts to help its clients maintain and improve their software. CSI is working with Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and others to identify potential collaborative projects. Cohen said his company is talking with the financial services industry, which is interested in using common software for regulatory compliance. CSI also hopes to work with state governments, which could potentially save money if multiple states develop software jointly. 

Oregon is home to several open source initiatives, including key open source work at IBM and Intel and academic research at Oregon State and Portland State. That concentration of activity has translated into few entrepreneurial initiatives here, however, even though open source is a hot technology among investors. Dow Jones VentureOne reports that venture capitalists have put more than $1.1 billion in open source startups over the past five years, none of which went to Oregon companies.  In addition to Cohen’s new business, a handful of other small Oregon entrepreneurs have begun working on their own open source startups. Cohen said state efforts to nurture the open source cluster may be starting to bear fruit. “There’s a lot of people with good ideas in Oregon that are looking at forming companies,” Cohen said. “I think the time is really right.” Mike Rogoway: 503-294-7699; mikerogoway@news.oregonian.com; blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest

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