How are you involved with the Census?

I'm recruiting partners and contributors as we speak! Would you like to be a media sponsor?

How will the Census go about collecting data?

Individuals and enterprises will download OSS Discovery, run it and then submit their (anonymous) scan. The Open Source Census sponsors and community will help recruit people to contribute their scans.

What kind of results have you seen so far with OSS Discovery?

OpenLogic originally wrote OSS Discovery to help our customers figure out what open source software they were using. We released it as open source a few weeks ago because we think it is a helpful tool for everyone to have. Our customers have found some amazing things - they are usually using 10 times more open source software than they thought! One of our customers is already busy helping us on the open source version.

Why is it difficult for enterprises to track their open source software?

Open source software doesn't come in through procurement. Anybody can download it and install it, typically developers and sys admins. In addition, typical software tracking tools don't look for open source software. The Census enables companies to scan all their machines and generate a report of all the open source software installed in their enterprise. They can then anonymously submit it to the Census and see how they compare to others and what additional open source software they might want to use.

Do you believe it will provide an accurate picture of the use of open source software in enterprises?

We do. We have used OSS Discovery (the open source tool behind the Census) with our customers and have found it to be very enlightening. Often customers only know about 10% of the open source software they are using! One customer, who had a really good open source program and review board, discovered 170 packages they were using that hadn't been reviewed!

Companies worry so much about perception that they forget to share that they are excited about open source software!

Some of our Computerworld articles have reported business drastically underestimating how much open source software they use, has that been common?

Absolutely. Companies are usually off by a factor of 10 in their estimate of how much open source software they are using. We think that getting the real numbers out there will help everyone be more comfortable with using open source software and encourage its use.

Any info on how many countries are contributing to the Census? Any governmental interest from anywhere? We are officially launching in February so stay tuned for the announcement ... I can say we have a lot of interested people and there should be some good data coming out of the program.

Are you aware of any Australian results/contributions?

Not yet but I hope my trip to Australia will help! I know they are just as interested in knowing the data.