Net hopes to cement a place for Web-based community software development among commercial software vendors.
Net builds and hosts development exchanges for customers that use open-source models.
It offers services such as source versioning, source browsing and maintenance of developer contact lists. Developers just have to sign up to get free access. Oracle officials said they want to foster a resource community for Oracle developers and might consider outsourcing some software development projects if the exchange proves successful. Stacey Quandt, an analyst at Giga Information Group Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., said an abundance of application development projects, coupled with a severe shortage of developers, was the driving force behind Collab. Net's Oracle and Sun projects.