Black Duck Software Expands protexIP KnowledgeBase to Aid Compliance with Licensing and Royalty Obligations

Business Wire, August 14, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO -- Company Adds Signatures of More Than 10,000 Commercial Product Versions From More Than 1,000 Vendors to its protexIP KnowledgeBase, as Well as Code Published Since 1988 by Dr. Dobb's Journal

Black Duck Software, the leading provider of software compliance management solutions, today announced that it has significantly expanded the KnowledgeBase of its protexIP(TM) platform. The company has added more than 30 million software component signatures ("Code Prints") from more than 1,000 software vendors. With this addition, protexIP allows users to identify and track the reuse of commercial software components, helping them ensure compliance with their licensing and royalty obligations. In addition, Black Duck has entered into a first-of-its-kind relationship with Dr. Dobb's Journal. As a result, Code Prints of all of the source and binary code published by Dr. Dobb's Journal have also been incorporated into Black Duck's protexIP KnowledgeBase.

With protexIP, developers, legal counsel, and management can control the introduction of licensed material into their code base and manage the licensing requirements of the many software components that characterize a modern software development effort. The addition of Code Prints of commercially licensed software and Dr. Dobb's Journal code complements the Code Prints of open source and other downloadable code already in the company's market-leading repository.

"The addition of commercial Code Prints and Dr. Dobb's projects substantiates the flexibility of Black Duck's platform, while continuing our commitment to provide the most comprehensive system available for managing software intellectual property," said Douglas A. Levin, CEO of Black Duck Software. "With enterprises using open source code, commercial software components, and outsourcers to speed their development efforts, they must know the origins of their code. With this expansion of the KnowledgeBase, protexIP provides broader insight into the use by developers of commercial components governed by commercial licenses."

The same software component reuse that enables developers and managers to decrease development costs and speed time to market also increases the likelihood that--without adequate controls--code gets used inappropriately. In the case of open source code, this can mean mixing open source and proprietary code and inadvertently violating one or more license obligations. In the case of commercial proprietary software, this can mean employing the code more expansively than the use for which it was licensed. In both cases, protexIP can identify and monitor the use of software components, enabling enterprises to avoid downstream issues.

With these additions, Black Duck's software compliance management platform can be used to identify and track the licensing terms of code artifacts including:

--Open source software from over 2,000 sites worldwide--from Apache to Zope;

--Other downloadable software, for example code from development kits like the Java Development Kit (JDK) and Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN);

--Proprietary software components including desktop software, enterprise applications, utility software, game components, device drivers, etc.;

--Operating system component software from, for example, the Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, and Solaris operating systems including dynamically linked libraries (DLLs); and

--Images, graphics, clip art, and fonts from more than a dozen vendors.

The incorporated signature data for commercial products is derived from a data set obtained by Black Duck from the U.S. Government, and includes signature data of software components from leading technology vendors including Adaptec, Adobe Systems, Apple, BEA, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Sun, Symantec, and others.

The signature data incorporated through the relationship with Dr. Dobb's Journal includes sample code, tutorials, and other code published in Dr. Dobb's Journal since 1988 as well as code published by C/C Users Journal, a sister publication under the parent company, CMP Media.

During the first six months of 2006, Black Duck also added tens of thousands of open source components to its protexIP KnowledgeBase. These were distributed to protexIP customers via 19 web-based updates.

About Black Duck Software

Black Duck Software(TM) is the leading provider of software compliance management solutions that help companies govern how software assets are created and managed. 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.