BURLINGTON, Mass., March 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Black Duck Software, the leader in open source software (OSS) knowledge, adoption and governance, today announced the company's plans to enhance its software developer initiatives and programs to enable open source software adoption in the automotive industry. 

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Automotive Industry Initiatives

Black Duck is an active member of the GENIVI® Alliance, an automotive industry association dedicated to drive the broad adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) open source development platform. The company has a strategic partnership with MontaVista® Software, a specialist in embedded Linux-based OSS platforms, that offers the Automotive Technology Platform (ATP) – a GENIVI-compliant IVI platform. In addition, Black Duck has partnered with BearingPoint, a global management and technology consulting firm with deep expertise in the automotive industry, on a first-of-its-kind study on the use of OSS in the European automotive market.  Survey results will be released soon.

Leading Black Duck's automotive market development is Boris Geller, a technology executive with over 20 years of building high-growth global software and services businesses. Previously, Geller served in senior corporate development, marketing, strategy, R&D and architecture roles at Oracle/BEA Systems, DEC and several Silicon Valley startups. He has a strong knowledge of OSS, Cloud and supply chain offerings across a number of industries in the US, Europe and China, as well as extensive experience with operating systems, middleware, virtualization and enterprise application platforms software.

Developer Initiatives

Black Duck is making significant investments in its developer offerings, including Koders.com, the industry's leading code search engine for OSS, and Ohloh.net, the largest free public directory of open source projects and contributors. Ohloh includes projects from the world's largest public source code repositories, including GitHub, SourceForge, GoogleCode, BitBucket and Launchpad.

Since Black Duck acquired Ohloh in October 2010, the company has delivered a stream of enhancements including dynamic data visualizations, project comparisons, and most recently, an easier to use blog and documentation section that includes social sharing features. In addition, an updated, streamlined "new project add" feature make it easy to apply Ohloh's analytical tools to new OSS projects. With a deep focus this year on engaging a broad cross-section of developers who both contribute to and use open source, Black Duck plans substantial future investments in its Ohloh and Koders offerings.

In support of this effort, Black Duck recently hired two key staff members to help lead developer relations activities:

• Dave Gruber, Director of Developer Product Marketing, will drive developer programs with a focus on helping developers gain greater visibility and insights into the world of OSS. Gruber has an extensive background in software development, IT management, product management and product marketing. Most recently, Gruber served as Product Marketing Manager for open source Flex at Adobe, and was an early pioneer of web infrastructure and development technologies at companies including Allaire and Macromedia.
• Rich Sands, Director of Developer Communities, will focus on creating an engaged, enthusiastic community of software developers as the product and community manager for Ohloh. He brings over 20 years of software product management, community development, marketing and business strategy experience to Black Duck. Most recently a developer community consultant to software companies, Sands previously worked at Sun Microsystems for two decades. As the OpenJDK Community Manager, he helped orchestrate and implement Sun's effort to open-source the Java platform, as well as serving in a variety of product marketing and competitive analysis positions.

Broadened International Reach

Supporting both of these initiatives and the company's expanding Asian presence, Keiko Hirano has joined Black Duck as Asia Pacific Marketing Manager, focused on accelerating the company's already rapid growth in the Asia Pacific region, which includes customers such as Fujitsu, Hitachi, Kyocera Mita, LG, NEC, Samsung. A veteran of the region's high tech industry, Hirano previously worked at the Linux Foundation Japan, where she was responsible for promoting and planning LinuxCon Japan 2010 and 2011, as well as the Automotive Linux Summit 2011 and Enterprise Users' Meeting. Hirano has held a variety of marketing roles at Industrial Bank of Japan, MontaVista Software Japan, NexWave K.K. and Seiko Instruments, Inc.

"We are investing in a number of important initiatives for Black Duck in 2012, including over 60 new hires – which will bring our employee count to 200 by the end of the year – to support the company's growth as demand increases for our solutions which provide management and governance for enterprises utilizing and deploying open source software," said Tim Yeaton, President and CEO, Black Duck Software. "We are thrilled that Boris, Dave, Rich and Keiko have joined the Black Duck team to lead these initiatives during this exciting time of company expansion, and in our mission to enable the adoption and effective use of open source software around the world."

About Black Duck Software
Black Duck Software is the leading provider of strategy, products and services for automating the management, governance and secure use of open source software, at enterprise scale, in a multi-source development process. Black Duck enables companies to shorten time-to-solution and reduce development costs while mitigating the management, compliance and security challenges associated with open source software. Black Duck Software powers Koders.com, the industry's leading code search engine for open source, and Ohloh.net, the largest free public directory of open source software and a vibrant web community of free and open source software developers and users. Black Duck is among the 400 largest software companies in the world, according to Softwaremag.com. The company is headquartered near Boston and has offices in San Mateo, California, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing. For more information, visit www.blackducksoftware.com.

SOURCE Black Duck Software