Joint development: MIT, Heidelberg University, Greenpeace Intl. team up to hire Collaboraid

I posted this on December 30th over at my company site, but I figured there were probably more readers here, so I’d cross-post.

I think it’s a really big deal, because it demonstrates very clearly the willingness of organizations from very different countries, cultures, and businesses to look for common ground and work together.

Here’s the posting:

We’re really happy today. We’ve just gotten the final confirmation that three of our dearest clients have joint forces to fund development of a key piece of infrastructure that they all need.

The clients are Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Heidelberg, and Greenpeace International. The software component is workflow.

Each of these organizatios have a need for software to manage dynamically defined workflows. Greenpeace needs workflow for their online publication process. MIT and Heidelberg for issue handling and software bug tracking, among other things.

Instead of each of them going on and solving their problem on their own, they recognized the potential for synergy, for sharing ideas about what the software should do and how it could be used, and not least, for sharing costs.

This is a pioneering approach to software development, one that’s built on sound economic sense as well as on positive sharing and trust. We’re happy to be part of this, and we’re thrilled about getting to work to fulfill their expectations.