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June 16, 2008

As of Friday, Microsoft is now sponsoring the Open Source Census, as part of some of its iniatives in the open source segment of the industry. The move follows Microsoft's partnership with the Eclipse Foundation, where the software giant pledged to support open-source projects at the EclipseCon conference in March 2009.

Originally founded by OpenLogic with the help of the IDC and other IT sponsors, The Open Source Census is a global and collaborative project to collect and share quantitative data on the use of open-source software in the enterprise segment.

The Open Source Census initiative uses open-source tools to scan enterprise computers for all installed open-source software. The results of these scans can then be contributed anonymously to the Open Source Census, which aggregates the data for subsequent publication.

Some say that part of Microsoft's overall strategy with its open-source support is to participate in different projects and efforts so as to gain intelligence about the open-source world the company must compete with. Others disagree.

So what is Microsoft's interest here? Well, plenty. We're not going to attempt to answer other questions, since we can only speculate at this time. However, as for Microsoft being real in its support for open source, of course they're for real. Yet it depends on what perspective you're looking at.

Microsoft is certainly serious about supporting open source in some respects and fiercely competing with it in others.

Sam Ramji, senior director for platform strategy at Microsoft said “as proof of this, Microsoft actively participates in open source through Microsoft engineers and product teams, with industry partners and with OSS [open-source software] projects to develop interoperable solutions that meet customer needs."

Ramji added "with the growth of open-source development running on Windows—including major communities like Apache, Firefox and Eclipse, community development projects on Sourceforge and Codeplex, and partnerships with some commercial open-source vendors such as JBoss, Zend, Sugar-CRM and Spike Source, the business end and the opportunities and the choices available to partners and customers on the Windows platform have never been greater."

"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,” said Ramji.

In addition to Microsoft, other organizations such as Active State, Enterprise DB, Oregon State University's Open Source Lab and OSAlt.com, have recently joined the Open Source Census at various levels, including a new level called "Friends of the Open Source Census."

Active State, Enterprise DB and OSAlt.com last joined at the "Friends" level, and the OSU Open Source Lab joined Microsoft as a new sponsor of the Open Source Census.

Last month, Microsoft also hired Lauren Cooney, a former IBMer and BEA Systems employee and community development enthusiast to help focus on open source and community efforts. Some ran into Cooney at JavaOne in San Francisco and she said she was excited about her new opportunity at Microsoft. She said she looks forward in helping Microsoft continue to open up.

Additionally, Cooney runs the Web Platform team in Microsoft's Application Platform and Developer Division. In a late-May blog post, Cooney wrote: "The acceptance of the vision of Microsoft as a more open company was crystal clear as something that has to be done both internally and externally at Microsoft. It's always been a principle at Microsoft to give transparency to what we do, but now, we're fully committed to being a more open company. Period."

Cooney added "I sat down with Sam Ramji, Robert Duffner and Brian Goldfarb just this week (Sam who I worked with at BEA, and Robert, who I worked with at both BEA and IBM-- Brian's even my new boss) and we have some good ideas of where we need to go and what we need to do to get this done. Will this happen overnight? No. But the shift is happening, and I'm really excited about what we can do. There's so much opportunity here, it's just incredible. And people are committed to making it happen, and to see the change in that thought process is terrific."

OpenLogic launched the Open Source Census in April, and according to results thus far, some early trends have emerged. For one, Ubuntu is the top Linux distribution on machines scanned to date. Various versions of Ubuntu accounted for almost 50 percent of all Linux distributions installed on participating machines.

Debian accounted for 14 percent; SUSE Linux accounted for 12 percent and Fedora Core had 7 percent. Also, 66 percent of machines scanned in the first two months were outside the United States. U.S. participants represented about a third of participants, and the top five installed open-source packages, in order, were: FireFox, Xerces, Zlib, Xalan and Prototype.

Moreover, Cooney said that while she was in the process of interviewing for the job at Microsoft, "I made it very clear that I care about the community first, and the company second. Every single person I talked to (from VPs like Dan'l Lewin and GMs like Sheila Gulati, right down to the business manager in the office, I kid you not) understood that this was critical to success.

And that while other divisions might care about revenues or competition, our key job is ensuring that developers are successful, regardless of the circumstances or products they are developing on."

Kim Weins, senior v.p. of products and marketing at OpenLogic said “for the very first time and at no cost at all ,the Open Source Census gives enterprises the chance to see what open-source software is already installed on their computers and to compare themselves to similar companies.”

Weins added “having this visibility helps with everything from open-source governance to plans for buying open-source support.”

Source: Microsoft.

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