Another company has joined the nascent market for open source software due diligence research tools. San Francisco-based startup Palamida is now shipping its “IP Amplifer” software, which the company says can help companies understand the origins of the open source code they use, as well as their license obligations.

Previously, in May of 2004, Black Duck began offering similar open source due diligence research services aimed at developers and IP lawyers. Black Duck's “protex/IP” services were soon contracted by Red Hat, and the startup was able to hire Larry Rosen as senior advisor. Black Duck raised $5M in funding in July of 2004.

Palamida, meanwhile, was founded in 2003, and received Series A funding from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, WaldenVC, and Stanford University. It has previously released two versions of its IP AMPlifier product to beta users. However, the 3.0 version is the first to reach general availability.

Palamida claims its IP AMPlifier 3.0 has the fastest available pattern matching technology, and the largest database of open source software, with over 38 million files. The product can search binaries, source code, images, icons, text documents, and XML for items licensed under open source licenses, Palamida says.

Gartner's VP and research director, Mark Driver, said, “The sheer volume of software code in use at the average enterprise company today creates a profound need for a solution that automates the process of software intellectual property detection and identification.”

Palamida CEO Mark Tolliver, an ex Sun executive of 10 years, said, “We're in a phase change from ad hoc, in-house tools to commercial products in this space. IP AMPlifier [reduces] software compliance efforts from weeks to hours."

 
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