Industry-wide Campaign to Shed Light on Corporate Open Source Usage Via a
New Open Source Tool - OSS Discovery
BROOMFIELD, Colo., Dec. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- OpenLogic, Inc., a provider
of enterprise open source software solutions encompassing hundreds of open
source packages, today announced The Open Source Census, a new
collaborative initiative to quantify the global use of open source in
enterprises. The Open Source Census will be rolled out in several phases
over the next six months. The first phase of the program launches today
with the release of OSS Discovery under an open source license, as well as
an invitation for open source developers, software vendors and large ISVs
to join The Open Source Census project.
The overarching goal of The Open Source Census is to paint an accurate
portrait of open source usage in the enterprise. Today, many enterprises do
not know what open source software is installed on desktops and servers --
making traditional market research methodologies insufficient to identify
what open source projects are gaining traction in the enterprise.
Yet the demand for this information is great, as enterprises struggle
to sift through thousands of open source projects to determine what might
work for them. Using the new OSS Discovery tool, enterprises will be able
to scan any of their computers and contribute the scan results back into
The Open Source Census database -- anonymously and free of charge. Once
they have contributed scans, enterprises will have access to reports that
summarize their own open source usage and provide comparisons to other
similar companies. These reports will enable companies to benchmark their
own open source usage and identify opportunities to leverage the benefits
of more open source software.
All the basic anonymous aggregate data collected through The Open
Source Census will be provided for free on a web site. This aggregate data
will list the number of times each project has been installed on computers
across all participating enterprises.
The Open Source Census will be a collaborative initiative. During this
initial phase, OpenLogic is recruiting open source communities, vendors and
organizations to join The Open Source Census as co-sponsors. Each
participating partner will share the goal of quantifying and promoting
corporate open source usage. Partners will also have access to the
anonymous data gathered by The Open Source Census.
"As a contributor, expert and leader in the open source community and
to a number of open source projects such as Apache, Perl, sendmail, PHP,
GNU and FreeBSD, I can see great value in viewing first hand how
enterprises are using open source projects," said Jim Jagielski, CTO of
Covalent Technologies and Chairman of Board of Directors of the Apache
Software Foundation (ASF). "The Open Source Census could help new projects
-- as well as established projects -- assess corporate interest and uptake
of their projects as well as the inherent vitality of their respective
communities."
OpenLogic is also releasing today OSS Discovery, an open source
software tool that enables enterprises to find installed open source
software. A revision of previously released OpenLogic Discovery, OSS
Discovery offers a new pluggable architecture that enables community
members to contribute their own fingerprint rules to identify open source
software packages. OSS Discovery can be used under the GNU Affero General
Public License version 3. OSS Discovery will be available for download from
ossdiscovery.opensource.collab.net, hosted by CollabNet, the company behind
popular developer networks and open source community sites such as Sun's
java.net and tigris.org, home of the Subversion open source versioning
system.
"CollabNet is excited about the potential of what The Open Source
Census can accomplish," said Bill Portelli, CEO of CollabNet. "Now,
enterprises will be able to discover, quantify and learn more about their
actual usage of open source. The data will also allow companies to
collaborate internally and with open source communities using distributed
development infrastructure such as CollabNet to innovate and ensure the
success of open source in the enterprise."
The next phase of The Open Source Census will be in the first quarter
of 2008, when the project will begin collecting data on open source usage
from enterprises.
For more information on The Open Source Census project or co-sponsor
opportunities, please visit http://www.theopensourcecensus.org. Downloads for OSS
Discovery and access to the community for OSS Discovery are at
http://www.ossdiscovery.org.
"This is an ambitious and worthwhile effort by OpenLogic and it will be
highly successful with the active involvement of the leading members of the
open source ecosystem," said Andrew Aitken, CEO of the Olliance Group. "We
hope that the community sees the value in participating so we all gain
better insight into how open source software is being used in enterprises
and government today."
About OpenLogic
OpenLogic is a leading provider of open source solutions that enable
enterprises to safely acquire, support, and control open source software.
OpenLogic provides enterprises with a certified library of open source
software that encompasses hundreds of the most popular open source packages
via OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX), a free web site where companies can find,
research, and download certified, enterprise-ready open source packages on
demand. With the broadest open source coverage in the industry, OpenLogic
offers indemnification; updates; and enterprise-grade technical support
backed by the OpenLogic Expert Community. OpenLogic also provides solutions
for open source governance and to automate the integration and deployment
of open source components -- reducing the risk and maximizing the cost
savings associated with using open source software. For more on OpenLogic,
go to http://www.openlogic.com .
Contact: Bret Clement
(303) 462-3057
bret@pageonepr.com
SOURCE OpenLogic, Inc.
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Related links:
http://www.openlogic.com
CONTACT:
Bret Clement, +1-303-462-3057,
bret@pageonepr.com, for OpenLogic, Inc.
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