Black Duck Offers FREE Online Service To Analyze Software for Open Source License Compliance

1 January 1970

At the 2005 O'Reilly European Open Source Convention, Black Duck Software Inc., the leading provider of software compliance management solutions, announced that it will offer use of its popular, online, protexIP™/OnDemand software compliance assessment service free of charge through the end of 2005. The company hopes to encourage wider, legally-compliant use of open source software by enabling enterprises, governments, and other software development organizations and their legal counsel to accurately baseline their current use of open source. With this assessment, these organizations can confidently embrace more open source software in the future, gaining its many productivity benefits while operating from a sound legal footing.

"The commercial use of open source software has reached a tipping point, where virtually all development organizations are exploiting this rich source of reusable code – whether they know it or not," said Douglas A. Levin, CEO of Black Duck Software, Inc. "Responsible organizations now know that if they want to proactively take advantage of open source they have to play by the rules. To help the industry kick off 2006 with a clean slate, we are offering use of our protexIP/OnDemand system free of charge. This will give companies a clear picture of what open source they are already using, and help them to set the stage for broader, compliant and managed use of open source in the future."

Sorting out Software IP

Most development organizations today are working in a mixed intellectual property, or ‘mixed-IP’ environment that combines proprietary, commercial, and open source software components within the same applications. As open source has proliferated in recent years, it has become increasingly difficult for teams to keep the pedigree of software clear and ensure proper fulfillment of license obligations.

"Through year-end 2008, 70 percent of large enterprises will neglect to implement formal corporate guidelines and best practices applied to open source. Without such practices, the majority of these enterprises will unknowingly have deployed some poorly documented, ‘unauthorized’" systems running open source code or combinations of OSS and commercial code," said Mark Driver, vice president of Gartner Research.

protexIP/OnDemand is the industry’s first and only hosted service that helps companies to mitigate business risk by validating proper use of open source software within their intellectual property assets. The service, which has analyzed millions of lines of user code since its introduction early in 2005, lets enterprise IT developers, independent software vendors (ISVs), outsourcers, and due diligence teams analyze software projects to discover open source software and ensure that licensing obligations are met. protexIP/OnDemand is a completely secure solution that leaves users’ source code safely behind their companies’ firewall during analysis.

Special Free Offer Available Now

With this limited time offer, users will be able to utilize the protexIP/OnDemand system free of charge from today through midnight on December 31, 2005 to assess their critical software. They can securely analyze software projects comprised of source code of up to 25 megabytes in size. The offer is available by registering at the Black Duck website. Registrants will be provided with an electronic promotion code that will authorize use of the protexIP/OnDemand online system for their project. To register and for further details, including applicable limitations, please visit www.blackducksoftware.com/ondemand.

Improve the Diligence of ‘Due Diligence’

Businesses today are increasingly required to provide evidence that they are managing the origins and obligations of their software intellectual property. As a result, development teams are frequently being called upon for in-depth compliance validations in support of specific business transactions or product milestones. Manual code reviews are typically time-consuming, expensive, and, by definition, incomplete since no review team can know the thousands of open source software projects by sight.

With protexIP/OnDemand software developers can quickly and easily address emerging IP compliance requirements stemming from customer procurement, outsourced project validation, internal controls and compliance programs, and mergers and acquisitions. protexIP/OnDemand delivers a level of accuracy not previously possible and eliminates time-consuming and expensive manual methods. It automates the review process and provides highly accurate results in timeframes that meet the demands of today’s business transactions.

"With over 23 years in developing innovation in connectivity, Laplink continues to build an extensive IP portfolio," said Jack Wilson, vice president and CTO at Laplink. "A solution such as protexIP/OnDemand is a great tool to help companies stay in compliance."

Fast, Accurate, Secure

protexIP/OnDemand leverages Black Duck’s proven digital Code Print technology and extensive open source KnowledgeBase to recognize when code from any of tens of thousands of open source programs have been inserted into users’ source code – even small blocks of code or code that has been modified. As a result, protexIP/OnDemand does not require user source code to be exposed to the Internet – only a digital Code Print of their software is sent and used for compliance analysis.

The protexIP/OnDemand service also identifies the license associated with included open source code from its database of hundreds of license types, and highlights possible conflicts between that license and other relevant license restrictions or business policies. From this analysis, it creates a report, like a ‘bill of materials’, identifying which open source components are used in a project, and a ‘punch list’ of the issues for review by the company's legal counsel and, if necessary, for remediation by company software engineers.

For Further Information

protexIP/OnDemand is available now to users worldwide. To register to use the system and for more information, visit www.blackducksoftware.com/ondemand, or email ondemandpromo@blackducksoftware.com, or call +1 781.891.5100, extension 460.

About Black Duck Software
Black Duck Software™ is the leading provider of software compliance management solutions that help companies govern how software assets are created, managed, and licensed. Black Duck's offerings help businesses take maximum advantage of open source software while at the same time ensure that they satisfy the obligations associated with the code they use. Black Duck’s customer base includes enterprises, product developers, outsourcers, law firms and other organizations worldwide that are concerned with protection of software intellectual property. For more information about Black Duck, visit www.blackducksoftware.com.