Two software companies are betting that the open-source developer community is ready for an integrated software development system that also checks for intellectual-property problems.

Black Duck Software Inc. and VA Software Corp. announced Monday the release of an integrated product that includes Black Duck’s ProtexIP software compliance management system and VA’s SourceForge Enterprise Edition distributed development environment.

This package will automate IP (intellectual property) management and license compliance functions while integrating them within a group development environment.

The companies said that this integrated solution will help distributed teams improve their productivity through more effective use of open-source code and licensed proprietary assets. Both companies are jointly marketing and selling the integrated solution.

The use of open-source code, with its multiple licenses, has increasingly become a major worry of ISVs, as developers often use both open-source and proprietary code in their products.

“The growing use of open-source code and components from third parties in the software development process increases management complexity and can create business and licensing issues that put software assets at risk,” said Melissa Webster, research director of IDC.

“Corporations need the ability to automate effective reuse of internal or open-source assets while ensuring compliance with license obligations,” Webster said, adding that these are “key ingredients of maximum development efficiency.”

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