Dr. Dobb's | Black Duck Acquires Koders

Black Duck Acquires Koders

Expands portfolio for open source search and lifecycle management

April 28, 2008
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/black-duck-acquires-koders/207402336

Black Duck Software has announced it has acquired Koders.com, an on-line search engine for open source software and other web-downloadable code. Koders lets developers search for source code residing in the code repositories publicly available on the Internet.

According to Black Duck, more than 30,000 developers use Koders.com daily to search over 766 million lines code written in over 30 languages and identified with 28 software licenses. Koders.com is a web site where software developers can find reusable open source code, methods, examples, algorithms, and solutions.

"The use of open source software as a way to speed development and reduce cost is transforming software development organizations. To realize the full potential of open source, developers require a solution for both search and management," said Black Ducks' Douglas Levin. "The combination of Koders software code search engine with Black Duck's Code Center and protexIP products will allow us to uniquely meet developer needs."

Black Duck says it will be maintaining Koders.com as a free search service and will announce enhancements to it in the coming months. For instance, Black Duck says it will enhance the Koders search database with code and metadata from the Black Duck KnowledgeBase, a database of open source and third-party code containing more than 520 million code files, representing many billions of lines of code.

Among the types of searches Black Duck provides is:

Code search. With Koders, Black Duck gains a code search engine that can search for specific code functions or solutions in repositories across the Internet.
Component search. Black Duck Code Center enables development teams to search a KnowledgeBase containing hundreds of thousands of open source components. Developers can internally publish a catalog of approved open source components to facilitate reuse within their own organizations.
Fragment/File search. Black Duck protexIP automates the review of code and finds unapproved code fragments, files or entire components that were integrated into a code base without adhering to a company's open source review policies. This capability can be used to uncover licensing violations, security issues, unsupported open source and outdated code.