General Counsel

Mitigate Legal Risks.
Discover Unapproved Software.

In your role as general counsel, you need to provide comprehensive and accurate analysis — fast. When it comes to software licensing issues for open source and third party software, cutting through the complexity of license versions and incompatible obligations is difficult at best. Communication bottlenecks between engineers and lawyers can slow you both down. Yet your counsel on strategies to mitigate legal risks with respect to licensed code reuse is essential.

Open source code is governed by diverse and often incompatible licenses, which govern the redistribution of code components and any modifications made to them. The growing use of open source code components thus introduces legal risks. Increasingly, companies identify, mitigate, and avoid such risks by using automated code reuse approval processes.

One successful method is to capture policies that reflect organizational goals and legal guidance in a rule-based system. Such an approach tends to appeal to engineers, who appreciate technology-enabled solutions.

When you need to mitigate the risks inherent in code reuse, would it help to find a solution that both ensures compliance and boosts developer productivity? Let Black Duck help you —

• View timely, comprehensive analysis. Receive a report identifying all external software components currently in use, including code origins and licenses. Examine a detailed description of any unresolved software licensing issues and recommendations for remediation. Easily access and review the complete text for all relevant licenses.

• Provide legal review for code. Participate in online code vetting. Offer your guidance to establish a clear set of code reuse rules and help developers build a catalog of pre-approved code. This automated approach removes the guess work from both software development and licensing reviews.

Know Your Code™. When you know your code’s origins and license obligations, you can offer strategic guidance to mitigate legal risks. Black Duck Software is helping organizations and their general counsel navigate changing software capabilities and legal parameters by implementing effective code reuse policies in a collaborative, online environment. At the same time, Black Duck solutions help accelerate time-to-market and reduce costs. With Black Duck, conscientious governance of external code becomes standard practice.

How can you find out more information?

• Find out about Black Duck™ Protex, which validates your software bill-of-materials for each project and helps discover unapproved software in your code base.

• Explore how Black Duck™ Code Center helps engineers efficiently reuse open source code while observing legal and other governance policies. Read about the Black Duck Code Center workflow framework, which helps developers and legal counsel collaborate to do their jobs more effectively.

• Listen to an Open Source Panel Discussion with Chris Nadan, Senior Director and Deputy General Counsel at Sun Microsystems and others, as they discuss current and future trends in software licensing.

• Download and read the whitepaper Best Practices for Managing Software Intellectual Property in an Open Source World. This whitepaper propose new approaches to managing intellectual property in an open source world. It describes a set of Best Practices that companies can use to avoid the risks and gain the benefits of this promising new approach to software development.