The Linux Foundation announced that Black Duck Software has joined as a Foundation member. Black Duck provides solutions for software development teams and legal counsel to manage the hybrid software development process, which involves the assembly of internal software, open source software and other third-party code.

As more and more companies include open source in their applications, they are creating policies to manage the proper use of the code, taking into account legal obligations on copyrights. Black Duck will work with the Linux Foundation and its members to collaborate on legal programs that support software development including Linux and open source. The Linux Foundation is home to legal summits that provide an important vendor-neutral forum for leading in-house counsels from member companies HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat and now Black Duck, among others.

“Corporate counsels, outside law firms and internal software development teams have relied on Black Duck’s solutions for many years; indeed many very large enterprises have deployed Black Duck’s solutions to save developer time and reduce cost by providing a framework for hybrid development,” said Bill McQuaide, executive vice president of products and services at Black Duck Software. “For this reason, we look forward to lending our expertise to The Linux Foundation, which provides a forum for bringing users, vendors and developers together to discuss the evolving legal landscape in the open source software market.”

“Understanding the legal nuances of software has been an important topic for proprietary and open source software users and vendors for decades,” said Amanda McPherson, vice president, marketing and developer programs at The Linux Foundation. “But until now, companies didn’t have a neutral forum in which to discuss these seemingly sensitive matters. We’re happy to welcome Black Duck to participate in these valuable discussions.”

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