Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Black Duck accommodates GPL 3

analysis
Mar 19, 20072 mins

Black Duck Software announced on Monday protexIP/development 4.3, an upgrade to the company's platform for software compliance management. Featured in version 4.3 is the ability to ensure software code complies with rules of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3, which is to be finalized later this year, Black Duck said. Version 4.3 is being announced at the SD West conference in Santa Clara, Calif. Two

Black Duck Software announced on Monday protexIP/development 4.3, an upgrade to the company’s platform for software compliance management.

Featured in version 4.3 is the ability to ensure software code complies with rules of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3, which is to be finalized later this year, Black Duck said. Version 4.3 is being announced at the SD West conference in Santa Clara, Calif.

Two key enhancements in version 4.3 address the new GPL, including changes to the user interface to allow users to compare how code matches to more than one version of the same software code. This is important when open source projects start moving to a new GPL version and will contain code that matches both versions at the same time, Black Duck said.

Black Duck cited an example of how this improvement assists with compliance. If a manager runs version 4.3 to review a project and protexIP indicates an 80-percent match with a version of code under GPL v2 and a 98-percent match with a version under GPL v3, the manager can conclude most of the component is governed by the new GPL. The manager can then determine if use of this code under GPL v3 is approved based on company policy.

The second enhancement pertains to the protexIP KnowledgeBase, which is the library of open source, proprietary and other third-party code used to compare components under development. The Code Print Knowledge Base in version 4.3 has been restructured to provide improved capability to handle more than one version of the same open source component at the same time. This is necessary to enable the interface to evaluate a project against two or more versions of the component in the KnowledgeBase to determine which might be under which version of the GPL, Black Duck said.

Also in version 4.3, a reporting function called Code Label is featured to let users build a report indicating the percentage of code governed by various open source licenses.

New capabilities in the protexIP Software Development Kit allow for access to additional reporting information when integrating protexIP with an existing development system.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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