Microsoft sponsors Open Source Census

PC World reported that Microsoft's senior director of platform strategy, Sam Ramji, had justified the move by claiming that "customers, partners and developers are working in increasingly heterogeneous environments" , adding that this made the census important to the firm in the context of the "ecosystem" it operated in.

The Open Source Census Web site is a collaboration between groups of vendors, research outfits and open source fans. It claims to have the lofty goal of painting "an accurate portrait of open source usage in the enterprise" apparently, though it admits that this is “fairly ambitious”.

So far only 1,304 machines have been scanned since June 12th, when the census was launched.

Companies using the site, as well as individual users, can submit anonymous data about just how much open sauce they actually have on their servers and desktops, information which is then published freely on the site.

Those who submit data are then able to receive all kinds of reports showing them stats about their own open sauce usage as well as a survey of their competition’s usage. The survey’s popularity comes from the fact that all the submitted data is pooled and made available anonymously.

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