Black Duck Software estimates development cost ofOpen Source Software at $387 Billion

Printer-friendly versionPDF version

Reuse of Open Source Software could save U.S. companies $22 Billion a year

WALTHAM, Mass., April 14, 2009- Black Duck Software (www.blackducksoftware.com), a leading provider of products and services for accelerating software development through the managed use of open source software (OSS), estimates the total development cost of open source software at more than $387 Billion U.S.

To put this figure into perspective, the cost to develop open source software code is equivalent to nearly 50 percent of the U.S. government’s recently passed stimulus bill, the $787 billion “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”

Black Duck Software has the industry’s most comprehensive database of open source software and related metadata. According to the company’s research, there are over 200,000 open source projects representing over 4.9 billion lines of code. Using its detailed knowledge of open source projects and applying standard industry cost estimation techniques, Black Duck estimates that the total development cost of OSS exceeds $387 billion and represents a collective investment of more than two million developer years.

An additional analysis, which estimates that 10 percent of IT application development spending is redundant with existing open source projects, indicates U.S. companies could realize savings of more than $22 billion a year through the reuse of OSS in application development.

“Open source software enables organizations to save in many ways - through cost avoidance, time savings, and opportunities to redirect scarce development time to projects that result in a direct boost to the bottom line,” said Timothy Yeaton, CEO and president, Black Duck Software. “In the current economic climate we anticipate companies will increasingly look to gain competitive advantage by re-investing savings from OSS use into innovation. By allowing developers to find and use the right tool for the job including the integration of OSS with other code, open source software becomes a compelling proposition.”

For more information on this analysis, see “Estimating the Development Cost of Open Source Software: $387B of ‘Shovel-ready Code’ the Private Sector Can Use to Fuel Growth and Innovation,” at

href="http://www.blackducksoftware.com/development-cost-of-open-source">http://www.blackducksoftware.com/development-cost-of-open-source

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, visitwww.blackducksoftware.com.

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.

Press Contacts

News Source : Black Duck Software estimates development cost ofOpen Source Software at $387 Billion