IP Ingredients Transparency

ORLANDO, Fla., Gartner Open Source Summit — December 7, 2005 — GroundWork Open Source Solutions, Inc., a leader in open source IT operations management solutions, today joined Palamida, a provider of software intellectual property (IP) compliance solutions, in announcing their commitment to intellectual property transparency by being among the first commercial software vendors to fully disclose the IP components included in their software products.

By making this information public - under the terminology "IP Ingredients" - the companies are acknowledging the contribution of third-party software to their products, as well as clearly stating their intention to use this intellectual property in compliance with any terms and conditions the authors may require.

"Transparency underpins trust," said James Governor, Principal Analyst at RedMonk. "Full disclosure will breed confidence in software development, just as in any other business process. It is good to see Palamida and GroundWork fostering a debate about IP Ingredients."

Similar to the idea of requiring food manufacturers to provide consumers with data on ingredients and nutritional information in packaged foods, software vendors could use IP Ingredient labels to provide customers, investors and partners with technical and legal information about their code. Clearly articulated IP Ingredient labels would be designed to provide standardized formats that help organizations make informed business and legal decisions about software they bring into their code bases and behind their firewalls, assess a potential supplier's use of third-party IP, and enable them to see how the software fits into their overall IT, legal and purchasing requirements.

"We decided to publish our IP Ingredients as a direct result of assisting our customers with their own intellectual property management and compliance process," said Mark Tolliver, CEO of Palamida. "But more broadly, this step acknowledges that the process of developing software has changed to leverage more and more third-party IP. While these components may be free in some cases, they are not without responsibilities. We are supporting the trend to transparency by formally recognizing the contribution of commercial and open source software to our product, validating that our use conforms to the conditions set by the various authors."

GroundWork Open Source Solutions actively leverages many open source software projects in GroundWork Monitor, a complete open source IT management solution. GroundWork relies on Palamida's IP Amplifier software to generate IP Ingredients reports for GroundWork Monitor. These standard reports list all third-party code, used along with associated licenses, the URL of the provider and a short description of the third-party product. The reports help GroundWork manage third-party code and give customers confidence that they have a full view of the components and licensing implications involved. GroundWork will disclose its IP Ingredients on its website as part of a commitment to open and full disclosure.

"In today's world of increasing compliance requirements, full disclosure and complete transparency greatly mitigate legal and technology risk, giving customers the ability to confidently deploy software products across their enterprise," said Ranga Rangachari, CEO of GroundWork Open Source Solutions.

As a provider of software IP compliance and management solutions, Palamida is uniquely positioned to help customers derive benefit from software ingredient disclosure. Palamida's IP Amplifier scans application code for a host of uses including enabling license compliance and allaying concerns about license transferal issues, as well as performing due diligence for a wide variety of corporate transactions.

To learn more about intellectual property transparency for software vendors, log on to www.ipingredients.org.

About Palamida

San Francisco-based Palamida is breaking new ground in software compliance and license management, accelerating developers' ability to innovate based on open source and reusable software components. With the industry's fastest search and reporting against the world's largest database of open source and third-party software code, Palamida's innovative search technology can reduce software compliance efforts from weeks to hours. Founded in 2003, Palamida is led by industry veterans and backed by leading venture capital firms. Investors include Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, WaldenVC and Stanford University. Read Palamida's blog at www.palamida.blogs.com or for more information visit www.palamida.com.

About GroundWork Open Source Solutions

GroundWork Open Source Solutions, Inc. (www.groundworkopensource.com) develops, integrates and enhances leading open source software to deliver comprehensive open source IT monitoring solutions. With GroundWork solutions, enterprises leverage the flexibility and low cost of open source tools to achieve enterprise-level availability, performance and operational efficiency at a fraction of the cost of commercial software. GroundWork is based in Emeryville, Calif. and its investors include Mayfield and Canaan Partners.

Palamida is a trademark of Palamida, Inc.