Open Source projects typically boast thousands and sometimes millions of downloads, but doing a download isn’t the same thing as an installing and using the software in production. Open source just makes it too easy to download, and because of that, download figures can be deceiving. People frequently download and abandon, either because they never get time to install and try the software, or because something about the software didn’t match the expectation of the downloadee, or because of a hundred different reasons.
Vendors selling proprietary software know in great detail who is using their software. There are usually very detailed licenses or contractual obligations associated with proprietary packages that require companies to carefully inventory their usage of the software. Licenses in the Open Source world, however, are significantly different in their usage reporting requirements, and as a result, very little Open Source usage information has been collected.
IDC, Unisys, and OpenLogic have teamed up to try to dig in and get a better picture of how many active Open Source copies are actually being used. By installing a tool called OSS Discovery, they can probe a system to try to recognize which Open Source packages are running in that environment and then transmit the information back anonymously for collection.
In order to entice companies to participate, OpenLogic will collect the information and share reports of the aggregated data with all the participants. In that way participating companies will be able to compare their own OS usage with that of other companies.
Today analysts rely on guesswork as to how many Open Source software copies are being used. And even within companies, administrators may not realize the extent of Open Source software running on their systems. The goal of the project is to gather data to derive a granular-level understanding of how Open Source is being deployed and to then give OS vendors a much better feel for what the impact of their software really is.
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