I'm always on the lookout for good free or inexpensive software tools, and one of the things that caught my eye was an announcement by Black Duck Software, in late July, that their code search engine Koders.com now contains 15 percent more code through the addition of C and C++ code governed by open source and other licenses.

Black Duck acquired Koders in April 2008 and has quickly worked to enhance it for the benefit of the more than 30,000 individual developers and software-centric organizations that rely on the search engine every day.

Koders complements Black Duck’s family of solutions, which together save customers time and money by helping development teams find, properly use and manage open source software and third-party code.

They say the C/C++ addition will enhance Koders’ position as the search engine of choice for developers looking for reusable open source code, methods, examples and algorithms.

The additional code now accessible through Koders comes from the acquisition of the assets of csourcesearch.net, the website devoted to locating and continuously updating information about the thousands of open source packages—including communications tools, games, desktop environments, software development libraries, plug-ins and utilities—written in C or C++.

The languages are particularly important to developers of embedded software or firmware used by the consumer device and embedded systems industries. Examples of projects that are widely used by embedded developers and that are now available through Koders include GeeXboX, a Linux distribution that acts as a stand-alone media player, and lm_sensors, which offers essential tools for monitoring hardware health.

“When we acquired Koders, our promise to that community of users and to Black Duck customers was that we’d make searches even more productive and valuable, and this is a very tangible step in that direction,” said Douglas Levin, Black Duck’s founder and CEO.

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