Intuit launched code.intuit.com today, an open source community that functions as an extension of their partner platform. The new site is designed to give partner companies a free resource with code, toolkits, and documentation for building SaaS apps.
Code.intuit.com has been released as a complement to the federated applications program, which lets developers use any programming language and cloud infrastructure they like. Though it was public, the platform has been taken out of beta and is released under the Common Public License.
]]> Big Names Intuit has worked with some initial partners to create flagship applications during the public beta: standout examples of the Federated Apps include those from VerticalResponse, DimDim, and Rypple.Intuit has also gathered an advisory board of fairly big names in the open source community: Jay Sullivan, VP of mobile at Mozilla, Michael Coté of Redmonk, and Jason van Zyl of the Apache Maven project. Also C. Michael Pilato from CollabNet, which is providing the software to run the community side of code.intuit.com.
How Open is Your Source?
The site may be out of beta, but exactly how welcoming it will be is unclear. Intuit comments:"The initial Intuit-sponsored open source projects are designed to expand a shared infrastructure to make it easier for developers to integrate their applications with the Intuit Partner Platform. In the future, Intuit will sponsor additional projects and encourage involved developers and organizations to create and run their own Intuit Partner Platform-related projects." [Emphasis added]
Intuit is creating an interesting mix of open and proprietary systems for development around its small business platform. No actual Intuit products are being open sourced, but with code.intuit.com, they're clearly hoping to capitalize on the advantages of being open by letting third parties participate in a moderated way.
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