Protocode is a plug-in product, which currently plugs-in to Eclipse. It is similar in purpose to both Black Duck Software and Palamida in that it identifies and when foreign code is plugged in to programs, so that companies and developer groups will be aware that they may be violating someone’s IP. Given this, there are two questions worth asking:

How big a problem is the use of plaigerized foreign code?

This is difficult to know. Apparently Gartner has estimated that by 2012 at least 80 percent of all commercial software products will include elements of open-source code.” I’m not sure how you get to a conclusion like that, but I can see how trends in the industry make it easier to inadvertently use plagiarized code.

First of all there’s lots of code that is covered by no license whatsoever that you can xerox to your heart’s content without violating any kind of law. Secondly we are now getting used to patching in “plug-ins” at least we are if we build much for the web, because there are a wealth of plug-ins that available in most software ecosystems such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. If you build something using one of these environments you have no idea whether the plug-ins you’re using contain copied code.

Thirdly companies now outsource a good deal of coding (to India and other exotic places). When they do that, they have minimal oversight of how the code is developed. So every now and then stolen code stories emerge.

Finally some programmers carry their own libraries and reuse them. Even if they wrote it themselves, the legal IP and/or copyright ownership is murky.

What Does Protecode Do That’s Different?

The Protecode approach is nicely pragmatic. It really is a plug-in – currently to Eclipse, but soon to support .Net and other environments if demand arises. As it’s a plug-in, you just plug it in and it starts doing its thing, which is to:

• Detect all external code in real-time, as it is introduced, and log it
• Identify ownership and licensing issues
• Apply whatever policies are defined for handling introduced code.
• Provide reports that itemize and summarize.

Protecode’s business plan is provide its product free to various Open Source efforts and charge corporations a per-seat fee for use of the product. It will be interesting to see how much success the company has.
So why would you choose Protecode rather than the alternatives. The major point of differentiation is that Protecode works in real-time as part of th development process applying policy at the point that programmers attempt to introduce code. It’s proactive rather than reactive.