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Microsoft turns sponsor of Open Source Census
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 17 June 2008, 00:47 IST
Microsoft has become a sponsor of The Open Source Census. "The Open Source Census is a project started earlier this year that aims to track and catalog the use of open-source software in enterprises worldwide," said Microsoft officials.
"The company's "customers, partners and developers are working in increasingly heterogeneous environments," so participation in projects such as the census is relevant to the "ecosystem" in which Microsoft operates," said Sam Ramji, Microsoft' Senior Director of platform strategy.
"I've met with Sam and there's no question those guys are smart with what they're doing with open source," said Jay Lyman, an analyst with The 451 Group. "They definitely have changed. Is it genuine? Some of it is and some of it may be less so."
Lyman noted Microsoft's involvement could help the census gain interest from larger enterprises. In addition to Microsoft, ActiveState, EnterpriseDB, Oregon State University's Open Source Lab and OSAlalt.com have also joined the effort, which provides a tool, from vendor OpenLogic, which a company can use to scan computers and spot installed open-source code. The scanned data can then be pushed in anonymous form to the OSC's database.
Contributors can get reports that summarize their own use, as well as comparative data based on similar companies' results. Aggregated data untraceable to any company is available publicly.
