Open Source Census

Here is another great initiative:

""The Open Source Census is the first collaborative, global project to count the number of installations for each open source software package. We realize that’s pretty ambitious, but we figure you have to think big. Of course, we know we can’t count every single installation of open source software in the world, but we believe it’s possible to obtain a sample large enough to be representative.""

Wow!

Ok, so, what do you do? Head on over to osscensus.org and sign up. Once registered, you need to follow the steps to download a discovery tool and run it on your system.

If you are using Kubuntu, you already have Java and likely Ruby, so you can choose the smallest download (~5MB). Otherwise, you can download the normal one (~40MB).

Once downloaded, you need to extract the archive somewhere. Then from the command line, run the discovery tool, providing the correct options and your assigned census code.

Pretty simple.