Version 3.0 of Black Duck's protexIP/development software is aimed at organizations just getting started with software compliance management.Black Duck Software Inc. Tuesday announced a new release of its protexIP/development system.
Black Duck protexIP/development Version 3.0 features enhanced capabilities for analyzing proprietary, open source and third-party software for license compliance, said Doug Levin, the Waltham, Mass., companys president and CEO.
The new version also features an expanded KnowledgeBase of software projects and license information, and offers a new, entry-level price point, Levin said.
Black Duck announced its new version at the OSBC (Open Source Business Conference) East in Newton, Mass.
The companys new entry-level offering is called the protexIP/development Professional Edition, which complements the Enterprise Edition. The Professional Edition is aimed at small businesses or any organizations just getting started with software compliance management, Levin said.
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The new offering is a single-user system for developers, lawyers or others involved with assessing code for open source software compliance. Meanwhile, the Enterprise Edition is tailored to development workgroups and due diligence teams, and adds the multi-user/multi-role, security, license management and customization capabilities needed to implement full compliance processes.
Version 3.0 of protexIP/development uses the companys Code Print technology and the companys knowledge base to identify open source, proprietary and commercial code that has been mixed into a companys code base.
"Version 3.0 is a significant release for us," Levin said. "We have a new string search feature that has a whole set of new vocabulary and lets you search by license name, key words or phrases, copyrights and authors.
"We analyze a whole new set of file types including Linux, Unix and Windows binaries, libraries, image files, Java archives and class files, and other formats.
"And we have a huge expansion of our knowledge base to include more than 200 million code prints and hundreds of licenses from more than 1,800 open source repositories."
The new version also features ease-of-use improvements including the ability to export analysis reports in HTML, XML or Microsoft Excel formats, Levin said.
In addition, "Theres a lot to this code analyzing," Levin said. "We have techniques to look at code to determine where it came from. And we can enable enterprises to look at and identify software not included in, but referenced by, their code."
Paul Henderson, Black Ducks vice president of marketing, said new development models and increasingly distributed development heighten the need for products like Black Ducks.
"In this new world of software assembly or component-based development there are more things you need to track the license obligations for," Henderson said.
"Nowadays users are managing software assets in ways they hadnt thought of before."
Walter Giraitis, director of quality assurance at IMlogic Inc., Waltham, Mass., in a statement said: "Managing a distributed team of engineers, and with so much open source software available on the net, the task of ensuring that all the content of our code meets or exceeds our exacting standards is very challenging and time consuming.
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"Black Duck software makes this typically difficult problem downright easy to handle, and has enabled us to be more efficient so that we can focus more time on developing a quality product," said Giraitis.
Last month, Black Duck announced an offer to provide free use of its protexIP/OnDemand software compliance assessment service free of charge through the end of the year to help promote more license compliant use of open source software, the company said.
"We think the compliance management area is maturing," Levin said. "People are getting it and were providing the market with true, unadulterated leadership."
Levin said the OnDemand offer amounts to a giveaway of about 25MB of code, or around one million lines of code, to users.
Taking a swipe at his competitor, San Francisco-based Palamida Inc., Levin said: "OnDemand is a singe product for a single user, which is about what Palamida offers. They only offer a scanning tool. We offer that and more, and we offer it for free."
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