Ignite presentation at OSCON 2012 by Dave Gruber, announcing the launch of Ohloh Code, a powerful new open source code search engine (currently in beta).

1. “Code is our platform”
Dave Gruber
Director of Developer Programs
Black Duck Software

2. Smart Disclosure Summit
March 30, 2012
US National Archives
“The White House… is pleased to invite you to our Smart
Disclosure Summit to discuss a powerful new policy approach
to helping consumers make better informed decisions.”
In late March, a special summit was convened in Washington, inviting technology luminaries and government administrators to join together to talk
about Smart Disclosure. The goal of the summit was to inspire and support agency efforts on Smart Disclosure. 2

3. Smart Disclosure
“The Federal government uses disclosure as a way to
ensure that consumers know what they are purchasing
and are able to compare alternatives.”
“Smart disclosure refers to the timely release of complex information
and data in standardized, machine readable formats in ways that
enable consumers to make informed decisions.”
A huge amount of personal data about interactions with companies and government is being captured from citizens every day, with little benefit to
them. Smart Disclosure is a government initiative to return this information to citizens in ways that enable them to make better decisions about
finance, healthcare, energy, and more.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/03/30/informing-consumers-through-smart-disclosure 3

4. At the summit, Tim O’Reilly gave an insightful presentation, setting the stage for what Smart Disclosure could become. While I didn’t attend the
summit, I did review his presentation where I learned a number of important insights.
http://www.slideshare.net/timoreilly/the-future-of-smart-disclosure 4

5. Aggregators provide choice engines
Helping us learn and
compare choices
In Tim’s presentation, he used a number of examples of existing consumer systems that aggregate vast amounts of data and use innovative
approaches to present information in ways that help people learn and compare their options, leading to more informed decisions. 5

6. The value-add is not creating the data,
but presenting it in an innovative way
that enables faster decision making.
And while these systems aggregate huge amounts of data and display part of it in a very simple format, the value of these systems is not in the data,
but instead in how simple it is to search for, understand, and compare data. 6

7. “Data is the platform for the 21st Century”
Tim O’Reilly, March 30, 2012
But the data is in fact critical to the solution. In Tim’s presentation he said “Data is the platform for the 21st Century”. The way I interpreted this
statement is that as we capture more and more data, we will need to focus on systems that help people sift through the noise and easily find the
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information they need, with decision support help.

8. Example: mapping
US Government
supplied the data
A great example that Tim used in his presentation is mapping data. While the US Gov has done a tremendous amount of heavy lifting providing a
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wealth of complex geospacial data, it was in fact the innovative systems layered on top of tis data that became so compelling and useful.

9. Code is our “data”, and therefore our platform
And while as developers, we are often building these “choice” systems, code is our life. Collectively, we create billions of lines of code, code that we
share openly for others to use and leverage. Code is OUR platform, one that we together build upon, grow and innovate upon. 9

10. We share code in many places
260k projects
1.8m repositories
107.6k repositories
28.5k projects
30k projects
9.5k projects
We store that code in lots of different places, making it difficult to traverse the many source code repositories to leverage the massive platform of
code that we’ve all contributed to building. 10

11. Where’s our choice
engine?
So where is our “choice” engine? The tools that can help us harvest and leverage this massive platform of code? Most of us depend on text
search engines that weren’t designed for code or project search. Yet we make due and sift through tens of thousands of projects to find what we
are looking for. But what if we had a fast, easy mechanism to find and browse code from projects that come from anywhere? What if we could
“take a look” in the universe of open source projects? We can. 11

12. Introducing Ohloh Code
10B+ Lines of Open Source Code
code.ohloh.net
Live on Weds (7/18) - a new open source code search engine called Ohloh Code. Ohloh Code is an evolution of Koders.com, with more
capabilities and more code. At Black Duck, we saw an opportunity to provide an integrated site that will allow you to not only look for code,
but to also understand the community behind the code. Most of you probably already know Ohloh, and some of you will already know
Koders, but when integrated together, they become a powerful resource to speed up the process of finding, learning about and evaluating
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code.

13. Syntax-aware Code Search
Ohloh Code is a syntax-aware code search engine, helping you search for specific classes, methods, functions, structures, or specific combinations.
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14. Aggregating to a common, searchable db
Code
And Ohloh Code aggregates code from all the different code repositories providing you with a single search engine that can provide you with the
visibility to all of your choices. 14

15. Filter results
While searching, you can filter your results to narrow your selections by things like language, projects, and more.
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16. Formatted, color-coded, highlighted
When you select code, it is formatted and highlighted for easy reading, with highlighted search criteria.
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17. Understand the community behind the code
Click on the project
to see full project
details
And if you want to learn about the community behind the code, Ohloh gives you summary info. And if you click you can drill down to see all the project
details.

18. Toggle over to project view to learn more

19. Ensure your project is searchable
by adding it to Ohloh
Code
Ohloh Indexing Ohloh
Projects
Code
code.ohloh.net
If you have a new project that you want to make searchable and you want Ohloh to start analyzing, all you need to do is add the project name and
source code location. Ohloh does all the rest.

20. Code
code.ohloh.net
And you can start using Ohloh Code today. While we index the remaining projects and optimize performance, we’ll be in beta for a couple months.
dgruber@blackducksoftware.com