Protecode announced the general availability of its software development tool for governance and Intellectual Property (IP) management. The latest release enables commercial software developers and open source creators to accelerate managed adoption of open source code in a simple, painless process. Additionally, the software is now available to the Eclipse community for anyone working on an active Eclipse project. Protecode automatically generates records of software content, identifies and reports associated pedigree and licensing information by checking its properties and compliance against an organization's policies, establishing IP ownership and creating a software Bill of Materials (BOM).

"What we like about the tool is the way it brings forward the detection of license policy violations to the developers desktop, where they can be quickly addressed, before they get deeply embedded in the product," said Simon Redding, Vice President, R&D of Zeligsoft, a leading vendor of software development tools to the embedded computing industry. "The Bill of Materials, containing the origin of all external, included and depended upon code, is kept up to date on an ongoing basis. The alternative of scanning all code at product release time can result in some nasty surprises and little time to address them."

The GA release provides features and functionality including:

• Support for multiple languages and infrastructures including Java, C/C++ and CVS/SVN code management systems.
• Support for Eclipse development environment and is ready for Ganymede (new Eclipse Release 3.4).
• Enterprise Adopter (EA) functionality - a tool for analyzing existing software projects.
• Enhanced reporting format with interactive features.
• Administrator for registration and policies.
• High scalability, allowing usage by large and small enterprises, as well as individual developers in any stage of the software development process.
• Certified Ready for Rational with IBM's Rational Application Developer products.

"Today, software IP contamination is a significant threat to any commercial software development effort," said Mark Driver, Research Vice President at Gartner Research, a leading information technology research and advisory company. "Automated, early, and unobtrusive identification of even small code segments would better allow developers to leverage open source software in a safe and controlled manner."

For more information on Protecode contact Angela Cuzzo, acuzzo@mrb-pr.com at MRB Public Relations.