Koders.com Search Data from Black Duck Software Shows Ruby Rising as Programming Language of Choice for Developers

Company Increases Size of Code Search Repository by More Than 33 Percent Since April

WALTHAM, Mass., October 14, 2008—Black Duck Software, the leading global provider of products and services for accelerating software development through the managed use of open source software, today released data from its Koders.com search engine that show a dramatic increase in popularity of the Ruby programming language. Tens of thousands of software developers use Black Duck’s Koders.com daily to find open source code and other downloadable code.

More Koders.com users are searching for Ruby code than ever before, according to the Black Duck analysis of Koders.com search requests. Ruby is now the fourth most requested language on Koders.com, after Java, C/C+ and C#. The number of Ruby searches has increased by more than 20 times since 2004 and has surpassed alternatives, such as PHP, Python and Perl. In addition to code, Koders.com features other resources, such as a developer forum and a monthly statistics page, which lists the top monthly search terms, top projects and a solutions map for eleven popular programming languages (www.koders.com/stats).

Ruby, used in combination with the Rails framework, is rapidly gaining momentum and will reach 4 million developers worldwide by 2013, according to Mark Driver, research vice president at Gartner Inc. “Moreover, Ruby will enjoy a higher concentration among corporate IT developers than typical, dynamic ‘scripting’ languages, such as PHP,” Driver continued. (1)

Black Duck acquired Koders.com in April, and since then the company has enhanced the code search service significantly. Black Duck’s team recently added over 200 million lines of code to the Koders.com search repository, increasing its size by more than 33 percent. The expanded code base now includes more code from SourceForge, CPAN and the industry’s leading site for Ruby projects, RubyForge.org.

“Black Duck’s search data confirms the tremendous growth that we are seeing within the community of Ruby developers,” said Tom Copeland, system administrator of RubyForge.org. “It’s great to see a leading code search site like Koders.com index RubyForge because it represents another way to make the projects in our community available to tens of thousands of developers worldwide.”

Code search with Koders.com represents an essential part of the hybrid model of software development, which enables development teams to reuse open source in combination with their own code and other externally sourced components.

“Black Duck remains committed to providing Koders.com as a free service for developers involved in hybrid development,” said Bill McQuaide, executive vice president of products and services at Black Duck Software. “An interesting byproduct of the popularity of Koders.com is the insight we can gain from Koders.com users and the searches they conduct. In addition, this data show part of a larger story—how developers can use Black Duck’s offerings to be more effective in using open source within the framework of sound code management practices.”

Hybrid development can make software development far more efficient and ultimately lead to better software applications. Black Duck offers solutions to ensure code is developed free of concerns raised by open source licenses, known security vulnerabilities or corporate policies regarding open source code usage. The company’s offerings can manage the entire lifecycle of open source code use for developers.

(1) Source: Gartner Inc., “Open Source in Programming Languages, Mark Driver, 2008,” 4-2-2008

About Black Duck Software

Black Duck Software is the leading global provider of products and services for accelerating software development through the managed use of open source and third-party code. Black Duck™ enables companies to shorten time-to-market and reduce development and maintenance costs while mitigating the risks and challenges associated with open source reuse, including hidden license obligations, security vulnerabilities, unsupported open source and version proliferation. The company is headquartered near Boston and has offices in San Francisco, Amsterdam and Hong Kong, as well as distribution partners throughout the world. For more information, visit www.blackducksoftware.com.

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Black Duck, Know Your Code and the Black Duck logo are registered trademarks of Black Duck Software, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. Koders is a trademark of Black Duck Software, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

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