Open Source Census Highlights the Future of Open Source Usage

The Open Source Census, a collaborate project that tracks the open-source installations worldwide, has come up with some interesting findings on the global trend in the use of open source software (OSS).

The Open Source Census identified more than 220,000 open source project/package installations within two months of the launch of the census, said a press release published in The Earth Times.

The Open Source Census was a project established by OpenLogic, a company that provides software, stacks and services that help enterprises to maximize the value of open source software. The Census was launched in April 2008 with an aim to provide improved data on how open source software is used in the enterprise.

"The Open Source Census gives enterprises the chance, for the first time and at no cost, to see what open source software is already installed on their computers and to compare themselves to similar companies," said Kim Weins, senior vice president of products and marketing, OpenLogic, in a statement published in The Earth Times.

"Having this visibility helps with everything from open source governance to plans for buying open source support," added Weins.

Open Source Census noted some significant trends in the use of open source software.

The following are reported by the Census:

Ubuntu (News - Alert) is the top Linux distribution on machines scanned to date, contributing about 50 percent of all Linux distribution installed on participating machines. Debian and SUSE Linux followed with 14 percent and 12 percent of Linux install base respectively.

The Open Source Census also found out active international participation in the open source projects. More than two thirds of the machines scanned for open source installation were from outside the U.S. Europe, Canada, and Australia topped in installation of OSS.

The top five open source packages installed were Firefox, Xerces, Zlib, Xalan and Prototype, in the order of their ranking.

Meanwhile, The Open Source Census has been strengthened by the addition of several organizations including ActiveState, EnterpriseDB, Microsoft (News - Alert), Oregon State University's Open Source Lab, and OSAlt.com.

"The Open Source Census gives enterprises the chance, for the first time and at no cost, to see what open source software is already installed on their computers and to compare themselves to similar companies," Weins explained.

"Having this visibility helps with everything from open source governance to plans for buying open source support,” added Weins.

"Open source software offers enterprises flexibility, community development, and increased innovation -- the Census is going to shine the light on how much enterprises are actually using open source technologies, including languages like Perl, Tcl and Python," said Bart Copeland, CEO of ActiveState.

According to Andy Astor, EVP of Business Development at EnterpriseDB, "There is a growing gap between the expensive proprietary database products available today and the entry-level open source alternatives."

Astor hopes that The Open Source Census will show the strong commercial penetration of PostgreSQL.

"Our goal at the Open Source Lab is to facilitate open source communities and the development and distribution of Open Source Software (OSS)," said Jeff Sheltren, operations manager at Oregon State University Open Source Lab, in a statement.

According to Sheltren, "One of the main benefits with The Open Source Census is that it allows individuals and enterprises to report their OSS usage data anonymously to a centralized location. The Census data can be used by Open Source Software developers to see how widely used their applications are, while at the same time allowing enterprises to review their OSS usage and compare it to the aggregate data reported by all Census users."

"Microsoft actively participates in open source through Microsoft engineers and product teams, with industry partners, and with OSS projects to develop interoperable solutions that meet customer needs," said Sam Ramji, senior director, Platform Strategy at Microsoft, in a statement published at The Earth Times.

"Our customers, partners and developers are working in increasingly heterogeneous environments, and our participation in industry projects like The Open Source Census are relevant for the ecosystem in which we participate," added Ramji.

"On OSAlt.com we show that there are hundreds of open source alternatives to well known proprietary software products. We believe The Open Source Census will quantify what we see on our site everyday -- that the enterprises are no longer afraid of using open source software," said Anders Ingeman Rasmussen, editor of OSAlt.com.