Black Duck Software acquires the assets of SpikeSource and also hires Sara Ford, former program manager for Microsoft's CodePlex open-source project hosting site.
Black Duck Software, a
provider of products and services for managing the use of open-source software,
has acquired the assets of
SpikeSource,
a provider of software tools and services to automate application component
identification and assess security vulnerability.
Among the technologies acquired was SpikeInsight, a cloud-based offering for
automated application component identification and security vulnerability
assessment; SpikeForge, a forge comprising 17 open-source projects; the
Developer Community Forum, a group of forums associated with SpikeSource OSS
projects, virtualization management technology and a number of other software
assets.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is Black
Duck's third and its second in three months, following on the heels of Black
Duck's acquisition of
Ohloh.net from
Geeknet. Ohloh.net is a free public directory of open-source software and a
vibrant Web community of software developers and Free and Open Source Software
(FOSS) users. Both acquisitions reflect Black Duck's accelerating growth
trajectory-the company is currently growing 58 percent year-over-year in fiscal
year 2010-and also further Black Duck's mission to promote FOSS adoption by
making it easier for developers to take advantage of the growing body of
high-quality code in FOSS projects.
Black Duck's Ohloh site is language- and forge-neutral, and the company will
work with SpikeForge project managers to migrate FOSS projects currently hosted
on SpikeForge, such as the extremely popular
testgen4web testing tool, to independent forges.
"Our growth enables us to make acquisitions that increase the value of
our offerings to our customers, while benefiting the FOSS community by making
it easier for developers to find and use open source," said Tim Yeaton, CEO
and president of Black Duck, in a statement. "Both the SpikeSource and
Ohloh acquisitions continue our transformation from compliance tool provider to
full life-cycle open-source enabler, community participant and FOSS
advocate."
Black Duck will use technology from the acquisition to complement the Black
Duck Suite, an enterprise-class solution to the management, compliance and
security challenges associated with FOSS use at scale in enterprise application
development, the company said. SpikeSource's Solution Analyzer helps developers
understand what's in an application through binary scanning and connects to
SpikeInsight, a cloud-based service providing guidance on compliance,
compatibility and remediation issues.
"SpikeSource is a tremendous set of technologies and a natural fit with
Black Duck Software," said Ray Lane,
managing partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and a member of the
SpikeSource board of directors, in a statement. "SpikeSource's
technologies complement those of Black Duck, and together create a compelling
range of capabilities to help manage the use of open-source software by
development organizations."
"We see demand for open source growing geometrically with the pressures
of a volatile economy and highly constrained IT resources," said Melinda
Ballou, program director for Application Lifecycle Management Service at IDC,
in a statement. "This SpikeSource acquisition augments Black Duck's strong
existing capabilities for open-source management as organizations must
increasingly be able to find, access and manage OSS
securely. The combined products resulting from this-in addition to Ohloh.com
and the company's prior portfolio-enable a highly differentiated open-source
offering for Black Duck."
In
related news, Black Duck hired a former Microsoft program manager to help run
Ohloh.net. Black Duck hired Sarah Ford, former program manager for Microsoft's
CodePlex site for hosting open-source projects, to be Black Duck's senior
product and community manager for Ohloh.net. Black Duck said Ford brings nearly
10 years of experience building developer tools and engaging in developer
communities. Her passion is to combine agile methodologies with community
management to provide the best user experience possible to the Ohloh community.
In
a Nov. 15 post on the
Ohloh blog, Ford said:
"I spent the last 5 years promoting open source development on CodePlex.com, Microsoft's open source
project hosting site. During my tenure as the Program Manager for CodePlex.com,
I watched 10,000 open source projects get created on a forge hosted by
Microsoft. I believe a large part of this success comes from utilizing agile
methodologies to respond to community feedback via site enhancements. In
upcoming posts, I'll talk about how agile is the most fundamental thing you can
do to improve the user satisfaction of your site."
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