"We're all open-source developers, so we know what features we need," Stein said.

Google's site won't have -- at least for now -- the ability to search actual source code. Nor will it offer an e-mail system to facilitate communication between programmers.

Google is "moving into the enterprise and this is another key offering," said John Andrews, president of Evans Data Corp., a Santa Cruz-based research firm focused on software development. "Overall, it makes sense, complements a number of their other search and segmentation strategies and could facilitate a growing need -- the effective management of open source outside and inside the firewall."

Google's move follows a similar announcement in June by Linux vendor Red Hat Inc.

While Google is not an open-source company like Red Hat, it is considered a strong supporter of open-source, recommending the use of the Mozilla Firefox Web browser and using the MySQL database in-house.