Black Duck Software Analysis of Open Source Reveals Reuse of Code Representing 316,000 Staff Years

WALTHAM, MA, Mar 30 (MARKET WIRE) --
An analysis of 1,311 open source projects revealed that open source
developers reused code from those projects in other projects more than
365,000 times, saving the open source community over 316,000 staff years
and tens of billions of dollars in development costs. The study conducted
by Black Duck Software, a leading provider of products and services for
accelerating software development through the managed use of open source
software (OSS), points to the dramatic efficiencies and cost savings of
open source code reuse.

In the review of well-known open source projects, Black Duck examined
instances where reusable binary components from one open source project
were included in the downloadable release of another project. GNU Automake
leads the list of the most-re-used code, appearing as a component of
12,469 other project releases.

To conduct the analysis Black Duck selected 1,311 popular open source
projects, a small fraction of the roughly 200,000 open source projects
catalogued in the Black Duck KnowledgeBase. Projects in the study
contained about 491 million total lines of software source code. With an
approximate reuse rate of one percent in each of the hundreds of
thousands of reuses, developers were able to avoid writing some 1.4
billion lines of source code.

Black Duck spiders the Internet collecting open source and other
downloadable code into a repository called the Black Duck KnowledgeBase; a
repository of more than 200,000 open source projects with tens of billions
of lines of code from over 4,100 unique Internet sites. The Black Duck
KnowledgeBase is the largest and fastest-growing repository of open source
code in the industry.

The table below lists the top reused open source projects in the Black
Duck
survey.

Component Name Reuse Count
-------------- -----------
GNU Automake 12,469
Autoconf 6,621
X Free 86 5,925
Foxtrot 5,737
Apache-Jakarta Log4j 5,059
Apache-XML Xerces Java 2 4,960
Jakarta Commons-Logging 4,939
Java Platform, Enterprise 4,312
Edition (Java EE, J2EE)
Apache Tomcat 4,136
MS VB 2005 Samples 4,098

With 2009 software development budgets under severe constraints,
organizations are increasingly looking for ways to reuse open source
components. However, open source reuse in commercial enterprises has
traditionally been stymied by risks and challenges. Black Duck Software
provides an enterprise suite of products which assist development
organizations with management, compliance and security of open source code
when developers use it in conjunction with other sources of code.

Enterprise software analyst Jay Lyman of The 451 Group observes, "Given
economic conditions and the maturation of open source software, enterprise
interest in putting it to work wherever possible continues to grow. While
organizations are more comfortable with using and reusing open source
software within their development and products, they often remain wary of
the implications of using open source. Concerns center on security,
licenses, version, compatibility and compliance. By bringing together all
of this information on open source software in use, Black Duck can provide
greater assurance for enterprise open source users."

To learn more about the Black Duck Suite visit www.blackducksoftware.com.
To listen to a podcast on trends and observations coming out of the recent
OSBC conference with Black Duck CEO Tim Yeaton, visit:
http://ducks.blackducksoftware.com/~webmedia/_Podcasts/BDS-Tim-Yeaton-3-27-
09.mp3

About Black Duck Software

Black Duck Software is the leading global provider of products and
services for accelerating software development through the managed use of
open source and third-party code. Black Duck(TM) enables companies to
shorten time-to-market and reduce development and maintenance costs while
mitigating the risks and challenges associated with open source reuse,
including hidden license obligations, security vulnerabilities,
unsupported open source and version proliferation. The company is
headquartered near Boston and has offices in San Francisco, Amsterdam and
Hong Kong, as well as distribution partners throughout the world. For
more information, visit www.blackducksoftware.com.

Black Duck, Know Your Code and the Black Duck logo are registered
trademarks of Black Duck Software, Inc. in the United States and other
jurisdictions. Koders is a trademark of Black Duck Software, Inc. All
other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Copyright 2009, Market Wire, All rights reserved.

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