The Open Source Census

Traditional software procurement practices in any enterprise involve channels which readily lend themselves to gathering statistics about usage (based on procurement, license agreements, the transaction details, etc.). However with Open Source Software (OSS), typically the software enters the enterprise via direct downloads by individuals within the company making it difficult to get a holistic picture of OSS adoption. For the OSS community as well, there isn't much visibility beyond the number of downloads. The Open Source Census is a "global, collaborative project to collect and share quantitative data on the use of open source software in the enterprise."

The project requests that users of OSS register anonymously with the site and download the OSS Discovery (via BitTorrent) scanning software. At the time of registration, the user is also provided with a census code. The OSS Discovery software scans one or more systems and produces a report of the OSS packages discovered on the system. This report can be submitted to the Census website with some optional non-identifiable statistics about the enterprise. The Census collates data across enterprises to produce useful reports about OSS adoption. For example, here's the report of all OSS packages ranked by number of installations. It's no surprise that Firefox is leading the list given the small population and predominance of desktops in the scans.

Top 5 Packages (as of August 6th 2008)

Please help the OSS community by signing up for the Census and providing information about your OSS usage.

Comments

FCC Aproves Sirius-XM Merger

This has been a long time coming but finally the FCC has finally approved the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio with XM Satellite Radio . The combined entity is pretty much a monopoly in the satellite radio space but they are still competing with terrestrial radio. Either way, their stocks, NASDAQ:SIRI and NASDAQ:XMSR should get a good boost on Monday. Yahoo! Finance Quote for SIRI Quote for XMSR

Lead Tide SIM Reader

I recently came across a cheap little device for reading SIM cards . It was available from Meritline for less than USD 5 with free shipping. Curious to see what it was like, I ordered one. The device came in a small package along with a mini CD containing drivers. The packaging advertised the device as the LEAD TIDE Sim reader . Like most things these days, it's made in China. The device has a USB 1.1 interface. There was no product code or number anywhere on the packaging. Installing the drivers for the device turned out to be harder than I expected. The mini CD's autorun installed some stuff but Microsoft Windows XP couldn't install any suitable driver for the device. The mini-CD had several top level directories with what appeared to be product codes but I couldn't match any to the device itself since it had no product code. Google searches revealed that I wasn't alone in my endeavors to get the device working . Further digging revealed pointers to some thir

Migrating from Palm Calendar to Google Calendar and iPhone

Here are the free steps to migrate from Palm's date book (or Pimlico's DateBk6 ) calendar to Google calendar for full iPhone sync. First, sync Palm with Palm Desktop . Next, open Palm Desktop, select the Calendar view, navigate to File | Export, select Export Type as Date Book Archive, Range as All and provide a file name. This will export the calendar data as Date Book Archive (.dba). There's a paid tool called DBA2CSV that converts .dba files to .csv files. However this can be done for free using Yahoo Calendar. Login into Yahoo Calendar and via Settings/Import, import the .dba file. It helps to have an empty Yahoo Calendar. Via Settings/Export, export the calendar as .csv file. Login to Google Calendar (also works with Google Apps For Your Domain GAFYD Calendar) and import the .csv file into any of the calendars. It is a good idea to create a test calendar and test the import before importing into your real calendar. That way if anything goes wrong, you can delet

Technobabble

Search This Blog