infoTECH Feature

May 24, 2011

Protecode Unveils Developer Assistant

Protecode (News - Alert) Inc., a company specializing in open source license management tools, launched, Developer Assistant, its first solution for real-time management of open source licensing and copyrights.

The solution was previously only available for the Eclipse Integrated Development Platform (IDE), and is now being offered to the developer community worldwide, supporting all operating systems and software development tools.

As indicated by the Protecode in a press release, the new solution operates discreetly and requires no training for the developer, allowing them to concentrate on development rather than open source license management.

"Detecting open source licenses as soon as the code is brought in or put together reduces cost and time associated with fixing related problems later down the road. Developer Assistant is the only solution currently on the market to detect open source and other third party code in real-time," Kamal Hassin, vice president of Product Management, Protecode said in a statement.

Protecode claims that its new solution, Developer Assistant, is the only real-time analysis solution in the industry that manages licensing and copyright obligations at the earliest point in a software development lifecycle. Also, while operating directly at the developer workstation, it is said to use the code analysis services of Protecode's Enterprise Server and compares the code structure of a file to signatures of millions of files stored in Protecode Global IP Signatures or GIPS. It then identifies the licensing and copyright obligations of the file and provides instant feedback to the developer as the code is put together or brought in from the Internet, an external storage device or a corporate repository.

Developer Assistant runs in the background of a developer station, and in concert with other components of Protecode's System 4 solution and allows developers to manage external content based on corporate license policies.

Key advantage of this solution are; developers are immediately notified if a software file contains unacceptable open source or other third party content; developers can fix the problem on the spot, choose to ignore the warning, or attach a comment to the violating software file and continue with development. Additionally, System 4 is said to store and manage all comments against the files and projects, maintaining a record trail of the events.

Protecode recently showcased its Developer Assistant and other solutions at the Open Source (News - Alert) Business Conference held on May 16th and 17th at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square.

Earlier in 2010, Protecode announced the Library IP Auditor (LA), an extension to the Protecode Enterprise IP Analyzer product in its flagship product suite of IP assessment tools.


Jai C.S. is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Jai's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Rich Steeves
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