It’s kind of a given these days that any major software project will contain more than just homegrown code. At the very least, it’s likely to have open-source bits and pieces in there. It’s Protecode’s business to provide tools to companies so that they can manage their code and know all of the licensing obligations and security issues.

But what if you’re a small company and, for instance, someone is looking at investing or buying you and wants to know the pedigree of your software for the purposes of due diligence? That sort of one-off lower-cost assessment is what’s behind Protecode’s just-announced QuickAudit service.

With this service, users upload their code to Protecode’s servers; the check is run in an automated fashion, and the result is an audit report detailing all of the contents, copyrights, and licenses along with an optional license obligation report.

Protecode’s experience is that there hasn’t been much pushback on uploading software to their servers; maybe 1 in 10 will object. In those cases, Protecode engages in a certification service project with them, and someone goes onsite to install the tool and manage things. Taking one to three weeks, this obviously costs more than the few thousand dollars for the simple automated online audit.

You can find more info on their release…