Open source start-ups push interoperability

Open Solutions Alliance hopes to increase adoption of open source apps.

Ten open source application providers have joined forces to create the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA).

The group aims to drive the adoption of open source business solutions by ensuring interoperability between software products.

OSA will work system integrators, open source software vendors and the broader open source community.

The group plans to focus on tools, frameworks and best practices that enable easy deployment and interoperability between applications.

OSA intends to stimulate cooperation between developer communities for different open source projects and communities, and member companies plan to launch joint marketing campaigns to draw attention to combined solutions.

Founding members include EnterpriseDB, JasperSoft, SpikeSource and SourceForge.net. Established open source companies such as Novell, Red Hat and IBM are notably absent.

The OSA launch comes at a time when open source software is moving up the software stack to enterprise applications.

Open source has traditionally done well in areas where it is invisible to the end user, including server operating systems and middleware.