For most people, open-source is a synonym for free software but for programmers and application developers, open-source is about sharing code, building on the work of others and not having to reinvent the wheel. At least in theory that’s the idea.
In practice, code reuse remains very low, because it’s often too hard for programmers to find relevant bits of code for their applications, until now.
The idea behind Google Code Search alleviate that problem by making it easier to find and share code. That in turn could increase programmers’ productivity and give a nice boost to the open-source movement.
How does it work? You enter your query in the Google Code search box using special parameters like lang: and license: to narrow your results, which will come back as short code snippets.
Click on a result to see the full page of highlighted source code, plus any other files included in the zip package and a link to download the whole enchilada. Speaking of enchilada’s, I’m hungry 
Ok, moving along, try doing a search for package:perl Frodo or package:linux-2.6 int\ printk to give it a try.
I really hope other open-source developers take notice of this cool new tool from our friends Google.
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Google Codesearch…
Google continues to AMAZE me. If I weren’t in Indiana and they in Mountain View, I would have applied for a janitorial position by now. Along the lines of 37signals, Google has the knack for identifying the problem, then coming up with the solution.