Open Source Development Labs -> Open Source Legal Labs?

[Alexander Terekhov]

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6140514.html

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Linux lab cuts staff, focuses on legal issues

By Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com

Published on ZDNet News: December 4, 2006, 10:27 AM PT

    * ZDNet Tags: Legal,
    * Open source,
    * Linux,
    * Layoffs,
    * Intl Business Machines Corp
    * Intel Corp
    * Hewlett-packard

Open Source Development Labs, an industry-funded consortium, has cut a
third of its staff, lost its chief executive and scaled back some
technical work.

CEO Stuart Cohen resigned to pursue opportunities with higher-level
open-source software, and nine employees in technical and administrative
roles lost their jobs, said Mike Temple, OSDL's chief operating officer
and its new leader. That leaves a staff of 19, including Tom Hanrahan in
charge of engineering, Diane Peters in charge of legal work, and top
Linux programmers Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton.

The lab's board concluded that a modified mission was appropriate
because Linux is now mainstream, and companies have become adept on
their own at some of the collaborative work OSDL was founded to oversee,
Temple said Monday. The group is funded by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Novell,
Intel and several other computing companies.

OSDL's middleman role--connecting customer requirements,
computing-company resources and developers--remains unchanged, Temple
said. "We will be a catalyst among those three, to bring them together,
solve problems and create the code," Temple said.

Funding freed up through the layoffs is set to go toward legal work,
which the group's members have found valuable, Temple added. The group
either will contract with legal professionals or hire a staff attorney,
he said.

In technical matters, the organization will stop focusing on projects
defining broad categories of Linux--earlier examples including efforts
for high-end servers, telecommunications gear, mobile phones and desktop
computers. Instead, engineering work will emphasize narrower efforts to
find areas where new software needs to be written.

Cohen's resignation as CEO was coincidental and independent of the other
changes at OSDL, Temple said.

Cohen is looking at opportunities in encouraging collaboration among
companies to produce higher-level open-source software. He said he's had
discussions with companies in financial services, insurance and health
care.

"Companies can work together to form a community, to work together to
develop the application software at a much lower cost," Cohen said. 
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regards,
alexander.