Patent ID: 7266805

Claim:
A collaborative method by which multiple parties maintain a sharable base of software units that represent software features submitted by the parties, and generate a plurality of different software builds, wherein each of the different software builds is generated from a common base code and one or more different software units, the method comprising: (a) maintaining the common base code in a central code repository; (b) providing a common certification standard accepted by each of the different parties submitting additions; (c) for each different software build associated with a given software unit submitted by one of the parties, determining that the build is a certified build if the build is in conformance with the common certification standard; and (d) associating a certification history with each software unit stored in the central code repository; wherein the plurality of software builds include at least first and second software builds that are related in accordance with a directed acyclic graph (DAG), wherein the common base code corresponds to a root of the DAG, and the first and second software builds are each represented on a different branch of the DAG.