Cloudsmith, a company that started last month, provides an innovative Web service that acts like a catalog service for easing the process of sharing code over the Web.

An excerpt from PC World:

“Many of our users combine our software with other open technologies to build their applications; they may choose servers from the Apache foundation, or use a portal from OW2 etc.,” wrote Naci Dai, chief scientist of Lomboz, an open source Java application development tool. “Cloudsmith allowed us to capture the configuration our users prefer in the form of Virtual Distros. … We can update them by simply updating the virtual distro.

Initially targeted at Java and the Eclipse Framework, Cloudsmith’s solution is like a mapping service that helps distribute virtual distributions or configurations of open-source software.

With rapid advances in the number and complexity of open-source projects, the new service helps users find and share code configurations, cutting down on the time it takes for users to assemble and get the code running themselves.

Would this service help open-source projects within your organization?