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Black Duck Software Inc. has joined the Open Source Software Institute to help promote open-source software in governments and academic institutions.
As part of its relationship with OSSI, Black Duck will serve as a technical contributor to an open-source software R&D program between the U.S. Navy and OSSI.
This program is part of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between OSSI and the Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, said Douglas Levin, CEO of Black Duck, based in Waltham, Mass.
The project is a three-year R&D effort to explore the use of open-source software within the Naval Oceanographic Office for Web services, scientific computing and enterprise architecture systems.
“Theyre looking at a variety of open-source software on different platforms,” Levin said. “And theyre trying to evaluate the use of open source for systems supporting war fighting.”
OSSI officials said they were pleased to have Black Duck as a member, given the companys unique insight into the government sector. OSSI is a nonprofit organization that promotes the use of open-source software in local, state and federal governments.
The organizations executive director, Jon Weathersby, said that Black Duck is filling a need in the adoption of open source within government and industry enterprise systems. He said that by helping IT and policy decision makers to qualify and quantify the scale and scope of their commitment to open-source software, Black Duck is helping to prove that open source is a viable, mainstream offering and can serve as a stand-alone or complementary element within any enterprise system.
Levin said Black Ducks expertise in helping organizations manage software licensing compliance is key to OSSIs goals.
Black Ducks ProtexIP product lets users manage the use of open-source components by automatically analyzing projects to find open-source software and then checking for licensing issues related to the code.
“We automatically analyze projects to discover IP [intellectual property] and license issues and then provide documentation of the software assets,” Levin said.
Levin acknowledged that the software compliance market is becoming more competitive, as evidenced by the arrival of Palamida Inc., a San Francisco-based company that recently released a new version of its IP Amplifier, which offers similar functionality to Black Ducks tool.
“Weve been here for two years,” Levin added. “We have a substantial amount of technology weve deployed at lots of places.”