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Scanner Spots Open Source Installations 275

Posted by kdawson from the toward-what-end dept.
Mike writes "Information security firm OpenLogic has begun letting users download 'Discovery,' an application that scans Windows, Linux, and Solaris machines and attempts to identify open source software. The Discovery application claims to identify more than 5,000 versions of the top 900 open source packages. The scanning engine is able to detect open source installations whether they were installed explicitly or bundled with other software products. Kim Weins, vice president of marketing, says 'We developed it in response to customers not knowing what open source programs they were using.' I can't help but think that this a move to slyly demonize FOSS by scaring businesses into thinking they don't know what's on their PCs."
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Scanner Spots Open Source Installations More

Scanner Spots Open Source Installations

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  • Doh (Score:5, Funny)

    by nokilli ( 759129 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:05AM (#19838877)
    You know, given the Vista experience, we're getting to the point where you know there's open source software afoot if the scanner simply runs without crashing something.

    --
    Censored by Technorati [blogspot.com]

  • Two options (Score:4, Insightful)

    by h2oliu ( 38090 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:09AM (#19838925)
    1) It can be used to help companies ensure that they are being compliant with the various licenses [good].

    2) It can be used to "root out" those 'evil' open source applications [bad].

    Unfortunately I agree that option 2 is most likely as it is really used to search for applications and not code. Why you would want to search for explicitly open source, vs. just knowing what is on a corporate PC doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

    • Re:Two options (Score:5, Insightful)

      by freeweed ( 309734 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:13AM (#19838985)
      Why you would want to search for explicitly open source, vs. just knowing what is on a corporate PC doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

      Because many companies have explicit policies forbidding open source, period.

      I've seen it get so stupid as to call it "shareware", ie: unlicensed software. The lack of a vendor really freaks out a lot of PHBs, and heck, a LOT of older IT folks who still are scared by open source. Don't forget, OSS is less secure because everyone can see the source code, and it's less reliable because you don't have a multi-billion dollar vendor backing you when things go wrong. (not sure if I really need the sarcasm tag with that last sentence or if it's obvious enough)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vux984 ( 928602 )
        The lack of a vendor really freaks out a lot of PHBs, and heck, a LOT of older IT folks who still are scared by open source. Don't forget, OSS is less secure because everyone can see the source code, and it's less reliable because you don't have a multi-billion dollar vendor backing you when things go wrong. (not sure if I really need the sarcasm tag with that last sentence or if it's obvious enough)

        Yeah, I know what you mean! I really need a multi-billion dollar vendor backing my users 7zip and filezilla.

      • It *scans* *Linux* for open source software? (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        From TFS: "an application that scans Windows, Linux, and Solaris machines and attempts to identify open source software."

        What will they think of next? Panning for dirt? Yes, I think you might find just a teensy bit of open source software on the average Linux install. Now what?

      • it's less reliable because you don't have a multi-billion dollar vendor backing you when things go wrong.

        The single most powerful counter I've found to that incorrect mindset is one little commercial [google.com]. IBM says Linux is the future. That should be enough endorsement for the older crowd.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rthille ( 8526 )
          Oh sure, but what that commercial doesn't show you is the drug-addled teen that kid turned into!

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by noSignal ( 997337 )
        You're absolutely right: to most companies OSS == shareware. Those who make policy have little or no understanding of the connotation in the title "Open Source" and don't care.

      • Re:Two options (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jotok ( 728554 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @01:51PM (#19841133)
        I work for a major security firm.

        All of our stuff is designed to run on 2k, 2k3, and Redhat, which as you are aware is essentially no different from Fedora (well, strictly speaking, it's no different from CENTOS) except that you buy support for it. That support is important. Large companies who pay $100m for a contract do not want to hear you say "I'll have this issue remedied just as soon as someone replied to my post on FedoraForums.org."

        I happen to think that, for instance, sourcefire has a superior IDS solution to ours. I know a lot of competent guys with that company. I like those guys. So without any malice I can tell you that when we had a bake-off with them, the deciding factor was that we knew how to deploy and manage a thousand-node sensor grid and they had not clue one.

        I say this just to illustrate that for, large corporate environments, it doesn't matter that FOSS solutions are "better." A lot of them are great, and I can think of plenty of situations where some Ubuntu workstations running OOo would suffice over Vista Business and Office 2007...except then you know down the road that company is going to want something out of left field, like encrypted home directories or , only, none of the techs they can afford know anything about setting it up. But they know that 5 years from now if they want some weird solution, probably one of the big vendors will be around to sell it to them, along with a consultant to walk the Remedy monkeys through troubleshooting it.

        I do not think that most of the people cheerleading for FOSS appreciate this. They just know that $DISTRO is neat, so obviously everyone who doesn't agree that it's perfect for a 10,000 seat enterprise network must be an "idiot." Le sigh!

        • like encrypted home directories or , only, none of the techs they can afford know anything about setting it up. But they know that 5 years from now if they want some weird solution, probably one of the big vendors will be around to sell it to them, along with a consultant to walk the Remedy monkeys through troubleshooting it.

          obviously everyone who doesn't agree that it's perfect for a 10,000 seat enterprise network must be an "idiot." Le sigh!

          Yeah, it's really stupid to call someone an idiot because they spend thousands or even millions of the companies money to license someones proprietary solution to a simple problem that locks them to the whims and fate of the vendor providing that solution rather than teaching one of their own technical people how to do a "man cryptsetup" or "man losetup". Wow, I could even google "ubuntu encrypt home partition" and find all kinds of detailed information on a dozens of different ways to do it.

    • Check this page:

      http://www.openlogic.com/partners/index.php [openlogic.com]

      Clearly OpenLogic has certain ideas about what constitutes "good" open software.
      • Ah, so Microsoft is an Open Source Technology Partner.

        But, alas, not a supporter of GPL.

        Microsoft: Open Source, as long as we can steal it.
        • No, it's more like: Open Source, as long as it doesn't work with anyone else's software.

          All, or almost all, their OSS-like licenses have that as a clause.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by catman ( 1412 )
          The sidebar with the Microsoft logo says,

          "The Microsoft Developer Network provides a set of online and offline services designed to help developers write applications using Microsoft products and technologies."

          Not a word about open anything or even "interoperability". Color me unsurprised.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by also-rr ( 980579 )
      The perception that open source software is not business friendly is a common, but mistaken, one. I have recently been trying to write a five minute, commercial biased [revis.co.uk] presentation in order to help correct that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )
      The only use I can see for this is in conjunction with a similar application that lists everything installed, where this application is used to eliminate programs from the list of potential licensing problems. In my experience, the single biggest liability for any company is unlicensed copies of WinZip and other "shareware" or "free for non-commercial use" closed source software that users download and install.
      • Then I could get rid of everything that's not open source. :)

        • If you want that, isn't it simpler just to use a Linux distribution that doesn't include non-Free software (and not enable any non-Free repositories)?

          • I don't really need such a tool. :)
    • I can't help but think that this a move to slyly demonize FOSS by scaring businesses into thinking they don't know what's on their PCs."

      2) It can be used to "root out" those 'evil' open source applications [bad].

      This is actualy good. First they fear it. Then they learn about GPL and LGPL. Publicity about GPL is a good thing. Then they compare that with any other EULA. At that point, they start noting much of their free to obtain free software has EULA's. Quick, is it easer to track GPL for 20 application

      • The Backfire. (Score:3, Informative)

        by twitter ( 104583 )

        FTFA:

        Customers would guess that they had 15 or 20 open source products on their networks only to discover that workers were using 200 or more open source applications, she said.

        Knowledge is your friend. If their intention is to root the applications out, they will discover how expensive non free software really is. Awareness always leads to more free software use.

    • 3) It can be used to gather more intelligent statistics on how widely open source software is deployed, something which has been problematic in the past and I believe was even mentioned in a recent article here.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Knuckles ( 8964 )
      1) It can be used to help companies ensure that they are being compliant with the various licenses [good].

      How? I have never heard of an open source-compliant license that restricts the act of running the software.
  • I'm probably not alone curious and wanting to download this free app to (re)discover which OSS is installed on my computers... You can download it from here: http://www.openlogic.com/discovery/new_download_re gister.php?ls= [openlogic.com] and you need to give your name, email, location and some more before downloading the beast.

    • Re:Free download but a form to fill prior download (Score:5, Informative)

      by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:16AM (#19839033)
      Sure, and while you're there, check out their page about "indemnification".

      Why Is Indemnification Important?
      There are many benefits to using open source software, but in some cases there are lingering legal concerns around deploying open source in the enterprise. In order for enterprises to fully embrace a broad range of open source software, they need to be able to deploy, manage and control open source while limiting the associated legal and compliance risks. For the first time, enterprises can now access indemnification coverage for a broad range of open source products from a single vendor.
      Let's try to make some money from FUD, eh?
      • I've never seen an open source license that controls how a person uses the software. The license only comes into effect once you start to modify and distribute said software. Why are people afraid of running open source software? It's not like you are going to get sued just for running GIMP.

        • Re:Free download but a form to fill prior download (Score:4, Funny)

          by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:42AM (#19839387)
          Sure, but the PHBs have heard Steve Balmer calling OSS/GPL "a cancer". Imagine the BSA kicking down your door and busting you for all those illegal copies of Firefox.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Phisbut ( 761268 )

            Sure, but the PHBs have heard Steve Balmer calling OSS/GPL "a cancer". Imagine the BSA kicking down your door and busting you for all those illegal copies of Firefox.

            Not only that, but we all know how viral the GPL is, everything that Firefox touches must become GPL too. Dare visit your company's website with Firefox, and you have to give away the whole source and content of the website. Visit your private intranet, and it's even worse...

        • The indemnification is not against the maker of the OSS app will go after you for having it installed. It's against Microsoft or any other patent troll who claims that their patents are being stepped on by that OSS app you've installed going after you. Microsoft has rattled their patent saber a bunch, with the accusation that OpenOffce violated 60-some-odd patents patents, although Microsoft says they will neither disclose which patents were violated or sue OpenOffice.org users.

          Indemnification is merely som

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by hazem ( 472289 )
          I've never seen an open source license that controls how a person uses the software.

          I have to disagree with you there. The installer for many windows versions of OSS software have a clickwrap style page where you have to agree to the conditions of the GPL before you can install the software.

          As you said, the GPL (and others) only apply when you want to distribute the code. You shouldn't have to "accept" the GPL to merely use the software. At least that's how I understand it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jc42 ( 318812 )
          Why are people afraid of running open source software? It's not like you are going to get sued just for running GIMP.

          Actually, the main goal of the anti-OSS FUD campaign is to convince people of exactly this possibility. If you read that "Why Is Indemnification Important?" paragraph critically, you'll see that its entire point is to insinuate that people are being sued for using open-source software. While the text never actually states this, that's how most people will understand it. Such misleading cal

      • Let's try to make some money from FUD, eh?

        It's not FUD. If your company holds a lot of patents and starts to use (meaning, for some: internally distribute) GPLv3-licensed software or, even worse, starts using L/GPLv3 libraries, you don't have any choice but to give up litigation rights or stop using the software.

        If your company depends on GPL'd software, it's even worse, as you'll need a lot of investment (and time) to make the transition to another software set.

        • Re:Free download but a form to fill prior download (Score:4, Informative)

          by hazem ( 472289 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @01:19PM (#19840739) Journal
          Actually, you're spreading a bit of FUD yourself.

          You can use OSS all you want and your IP is safely yours. It's only when you want to incorporate OSS software and code in your own code that you are then bound by the OSS terms.

          For example, you can:
          use OpenOffice to write all your documents
          use Gimp to do your image processing
          use vi/emacs to edit your source code
          use gcc to compile your program (be careful what you link to)
          use PDFMaker to generate PDFs from your programs
          use Firefox to browse the web
          use Thunderbird to handle your e-mail
          use apache to serve your web pages
          and so on

          and your code and works are still completely your own, free to distribute in any way you see fit.

          You are free to use OSS in any way and for any purpose. It's only when you want to redistribute it in some way (including incorporating it into your own work) that you incur any restrictions.

          I refer you to:
          http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLOutput [gnu.org]
          and
          http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCWhatCa seIsOutputGPL [gnu.org]

  • Crickey (Score:5, Funny)

    by also-rr ( 980579 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:11AM (#19838949) Homepage
    I have 12,000 violations on my laptop. I better make out a check to the EFF before the bang the door down... what's the annual licensing fee on GPL software again?

  • Inventorying OSS can help OSS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MSTCrow5429 ( 642744 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:13AM (#19838979)
    "I can't help but think that this a move to slyly demonize FOSS by scaring businesses into thinking they don't know what's on their PCs."

    Looks to me that this is just a simple inventory tool so business has an idea of what's on their machines, and perhaps if they see that people, having appropriate account permissions on the PC, are voluntarily installing open source alternatives, say OpenOffice instead of MS Office, businesses may be more conducive to migrating to OSS, or at least openly accepting it.

    Business have no clue what's on their machines. That's why you have staff workers running around as admin all the time, and picking up literally thousands of instances of spyware/adware/malware. They just can't get enough toolbars and cute fluffy pointers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pedrito ( 94783 )
      "I can't help but think that this a move to slyly demonize FOSS by scaring businesses into thinking they don't know what's on their PCs."

      To add to what the parent poster said, I actually think this could help OSS. Businesses might be surprised to find out how much FOSS software they're using and to realize how dependent they already are on it. That might actually ease some of their concerns about choosing FOSS options in the future.
    • Back in the 80's, it was obvious just by walking by a desk as to wether they were running dos or a mainframe terminal. Most companies have NO clue how much OSS is in their company. Some will no doubt use this to root it out. Others will start down that path and find out that it is being used heavily, and start supporting it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MenTaLguY ( 5483 )
      Alternately, if they find an unapproved Open Source application on a lot of people's machines, they might ban it and forcibly remove it from people's PCs if it's found. That happened about a year ago with Firefox where I work; fortunately they don't know to look for Seamonkey yet so I can still use that for web development instead (though I still miss out on some stuff like Firebug).

      If they started using that scanning tool here, I'd probably resign; I rely on Open Source tools pretty heavily to do my job.
    • I think the tool would be far more interesting if it also could detect commercial software installations as well. Because you don't need to scare businesses, they already are well aware that they have only a vague idea what software is installed on their systems.

      • (Commercial apps) = (Installed apps) - (Free Software apps)

        But yeah, you're right that it would be better if the program could do this explicitly. I would go a long way towards making it seem less biased against Free Software.

  • What's with the paranoia? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Iso ( 1088207 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:13AM (#19838981)
    Why the accusatory last sentence? Open Logic is a company that provides services for open source products, and the impression I get from this tool is that it shows managers how much they already depend on open source.

    • Re:What's with the paranoia? (Score:4, Informative)

      by kindbud ( 90044 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @12:12PM (#19839783) Homepage
      Yeah, right.

      Why Is Indemnification Important?
      There are many benefits to using open source software, but in some cases there are lingering legal concerns around deploying open source in the enterprise. In order for enterprises to fully embrace a broad range of open source software, they need to be able to deploy, manage and control open source while limiting the associated legal and compliance risks. For the first time, enterprises can now access indemnification coverage for a broad range of open source products from a single vendor.


      http://www.openlogic.com/products/indemnification. php [openlogic.com]

      They're selling indemnification insurance. Open Logic is a capitalist enterprise, not some FOSS charity. They're in the business of monetizing FUD.

      • They're selling indemnification insurance. Open Logic is a capitalist enterprise, not some FOSS charity. They're in the business of monetizing FUD.

        Indemnification isn't FUD, it's a fact of life in many real world businesses. Ever heard of Sarbanes-Oxley [wikipedia.org] for example? Or the privacy laws surrounding medical information? Etc... Etc...
    • Probably because most Slashdotters had the same exact reaction I did:
      "I'll bet their best customers will be high-ranking, low-technical knowledge PHBs looking to eliminate any non-MS solutions in their shop that techies might've installed behind the backs of upper management."

      Basically, the only people who will want to buy a tool to ferret out unknown FOSS apps (and not any commercial apps) are the kind of people who are afraid of their presence lurking in their enterprise. If it was a general purpose inve
  • The way they worded it made is sounds like FOSS was malware or a virus. "Scan your computer to detect a set of programs that you may not know exist in the system". Plus what is the point in having a Linux scanner as it is all (nearly all OSS). Solaris I'm sure has a good bit of FOSS in it now adays (apache, php, sql, etc). As for windows, what is it's purpose (Hey you're running gaim, firefox, etc) Once you have a list what does that imply? You must delete them? The only reason I can see doing this is for
    • > Solaris I'm sure has a good bit of FOSS in it now adays

      Unless you mean OpenSolaris -- not really.

      Solaris doesn't puke shit all of the place like Linux does; the vast majority of Sun-distributed FOSS (which is not Sun-originated) lives in either /opt/sfw or /usr/sfw. The other common place to get Solaris-targetted FOSS without building it yourself is sunfreeware.com. Depending on the age of the package, it will wind up either in /opt with an author-identifying dirname (like /opt/FSFxemacs) or in /usr/lo

  • On the more useful side (Score:4, Insightful)

    by IPFreely ( 47576 ) <mark@mwiley.org> on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:17AM (#19839039) Homepage Journal
    It could also scan for and find Open Source software that was installed by a third party without proper compliance with the GPL. Install as much third party junk as you can, then scan to see who is using GPL software without compliance.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Laur ( 673497 )

      It could also scan for and find Open Source software that was installed by a third party without proper compliance with the GPL. Install as much third party junk as you can, then scan to see who is using GPL software without compliance.
      Are you just spreading FUD? You don't have to agree to anything to simply download and use GPL software. The GPL only kicks in if you distribute the software.

      • Are you just failing at reading comprehension? He was talking about copyleft software included within* other third-party software. In other words, when he said "see who is using GPL software without compliance" what he meant was "see [which third-party developer] is [distributing copyleft software as part of their proprietary app] without compliance."

        (*Yes, it's also possible to interpret his sentence as referring to "mere aggregation," i.e., bundling, but it's obvious from the rest what he really meant.)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Laur ( 673497 )
          No, it is not clear or obvious what the GP meant. He said "installed by a third party," notice the absence of the words "third party software" or "third party developers", and note the use of the word "installed," not "distributed." I took this to mean GPL software installed by users in a corporate environment. Your interpretation is most likely correct, but don't pretend that the GP was clearly written.

  • I could've used this the other day... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by oldosadmin ( 759103 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:18AM (#19839067) Homepage
    You know, the interesting thing is, so many people are trolling this, but if you are, you must have never been through VC funding.

    I had to make a list of /ALL/ open source software used ANYWHERE in the company. Yeah. Sounds like fun, right? It sure was. Either way, this app could've made my life a lot easier. :(. Too bad I see it NOW!
  • I've looked into software to do software auditing before - most of it fell into one of two camps:

    1. Free AND lousy - many only checked the "Add/remove programs" list in Control Panel, which is practically useless if a package was installed just by copying to c:\program files.
    2. Expensive AND horrific license - most of the commercial software auditing tools which claim to do everything but make the tea seem to be licensed with rather nastier licenses than the software they're meant to be auditing.

    Is there
    • apt-get install vrms

      It reports any non-free software that you have installed.

  • Why do I need this software? It's easy enough to figure out without downloading random stuff from the internet.

    $ uname -rs
    FreeBSD 7.0-CURRENT
    $ pkg_info | wc -l
    1630

    So, subtract 1 for nvidia-driver. Subtract 1 for linux-flashplugin. Subtract 1 for acroread7. That's still a helluva lot of open-sores software... I hope the BSA doesn't come after me!!!
    • $ dpkg-query --list | wc -l
      1100

      Now I feel inferior... Maybe I should pull in KDE or GNOME to compensate...

  • can see it now! (Score:3, Informative)

    by jshriverWVU ( 810740 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:26AM (#19839173)
    CEO: we need to start scanning now!
    IT Guy: which computers should we start with?
    CEO: Start with the people who file the most computer complains and go downward
    ..
    ..
    ..
    (IT guy comes back next day)
    IT Guy: Sir all of the Vista machines who had problems reported 0 infections, and at the bottom of the list the department running OS X and Linux development machines. They had tons of the stuff.
  • Seems like this will be a great tool to "out" companies using & abusing open software in their packages for Windows. Will be interesting to see who starts to find bits & pieces of GPL'd stuff hanging about various binary-only installations that don't come with source code for the app.

  • ...you could run this, take the output, do set-subtraction from the set of all software on the computer, and have an excellent closed-source software detector!

  • Could be a Good Thing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by yancey ( 136972 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:35AM (#19839313)
    I know in my own organization that management barely knows what the proprietary software does for them, much less the open source software. So this could be a really good thing if it causes IT managers, CIOs, CTOs, etc. to wake up and realize just how much of their business really runs on open source software. They might start treating it with a little more respect, even though much of it does not appear on their budget reports.

  • the irony ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by petes_PoV ( 912422 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @11:36AM (#19839319)
    so you can download a package that tells you what packages you've downloaded.

    I wonder if it detects itself?

  • First, I like FOSS products. I suggest to users that they install OpenOffice, Gimp, Inkscape, and other products INSTEAD of applying to our IT purchasing dept and costing the company hundreds of dollars.

    BUT I know users don't stop there. Everytime I touch a user's laptop I find some extra software I don't want to support. Most of the time I don't remove the software, I just deliver the customary warning: "If this software causes a problem with your system I will reimage your PC rather than waste time diagn

  • Okay. Let me see if I have this straight:

    We can use a free scanner to eliminate free software inside my anti-free software organization???

    • Nope, you got it wrong. It should read thus:

      "We can use a proprietary "freeware" scanner to eliminate Free Software [note capitalization] inside my anti-Free Software organization."

  • How does it even know what is open source and what isn't? Does it have a master database of programs? How does it match it? Against an MD5 hash? What if I download a Firefox trunc source code, change a line and recompile it? Will it find it?

    And what about something like this:

    /* Released as open source. Free to copy, redistribute or whatever you want */
    #include iostream.h

    main()
    {
    int myint;
    cout << "Enter a number: "
    cin >> myint
  • This service sounds suspiciously similar to running p0f. http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/p0f.shtml [coredump.cx]

    OT Question: is p0f the cat's meow or has it been bested?

  • Why not .... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @12:02PM (#19839621)
    ... build a scanner that inventories ALL software and catagorized it as OSS, unknown or proprietary/licensed? Odds are its the latter two that will come back and bite corporate IT departments in the *ss if not properly licensed.
  • AFAIK, at least MS TELNET.EXE and ARP.EXE are still based on *BSD code. And probably much more. Does the tool identify these?

  • How about a scanner that scans for commercial software and then recommends FOSS replacements for it?

  • VRMS would not approve. (Score:3, Funny)

    by croddy ( 659025 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @01:06PM (#19840571)
    croddy@localhost $ vrms
                   Non-free packages installed on localhost

    doom2-wad                 IWAD from ID Software's DOOM 2 computer game
    iozone3                   Filesystem and Disk Benchmarking Tool
    nvidia-glx                NVIDIA binary Xorg driver
      Reason: Proprietary license
    nvidia-glx-dev            NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development files
      Reason: Proprietary license
    openlogic-discovery       Tool for locating installed open-source software packages
      Reason: Who needs this - when you've got me?

      5 non-free packages, 0.3% of 1519 installed packages

  • Since they quoted me.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kim weins ( 1127269 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @01:07PM (#19840591)
    I just want to let you know OpenLogic is a big fan of source. Our mission is to enable companies to use more open source software. Our whole business is built around that proposition, so we are definitely not trying to get companies to remove FOSS. The reality is that enterprises we work with are already using lots of FOSS -- whether they realize it or not. However, the corporate legal, compliance, IT and architecture folks want to know that they have certain policies and procedures in place around open source -- especially for software that's going outside the company or software that's going into production. By getting certification, support and indemnification from OpenLogic, it allows the corporate compliance types to feel MORE comfortable about FOSS and therefore be more willing to let developers use FOSS. The reason that we developed this free tool is that when we talked to companies, they weren't really sure what FOSS they were using. For many companies, the asset management tools that they already have in place can not necessarily detect open source software. We wanted a simple tool that would let them create that inventory. As far as registration, we have been debating that internally and have some changes planned to reduce the barriers -- so stay tuned on that front. Kim Weins
  • Observations:
    > the scan s/w itself is not FOSS.
    > OpenLogic, who issued the press release (it's NOT a news story) seems to be focussed on managing FOSS dists in the enterprise.
    > According to their website, OpenLogic is a Microsoft "technology partner" ("indentured servant"). ditto with Novell. But they're also partners with redhat. Tainted, but there's hope.

    They do seem to be paying for and building up a developer community, but I didn't see a list of what projects they're working on or who's helpi
  • I'll bet the guys who run OpenLogic are scratching their heads over this story. "Demonize FOSS?" they're saying to each other. "WTF are they talking about?"

    I don't think that would be in their interests. From the company's website: [openlogic.com]

    OpenLogic is a leading provider of open source solutions that enable enterprises to safely acquire, support, and control open source software. OpenLogic provides enterprises with a certified library of open source software that encompasses hundreds of the most popular open so

  • Since they have an annoying form you have to fill out to get the download location I figured I'd save everybody the time and effort. Here's the page to all the downloads:

    http://www.openlogic.com/discovery/new_download_no w.php [openlogic.com]

  • At a previous employer later acquired by IBM [ibm.com], I worked on a tool for identifying what software was installed on a given mainframe, and once installed, it would track the usage of each application each day/week/month/year, so companies could identify software they were no longer using and could suspend license/maint. fee payments. It worked by wedging itself into the OS and capturing each program load request for tracking execution, and it would scan the system for files that met certain signatures (file siz

  • Silly (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Saint ( 12232 ) *
    This is more than a bit silly. Scanning for just open source software makes about as much sense as an email service that scans just email from mailing lists. While there may be reasons to scan for non-compliant software, there doesn't appear to be any compelling reason for this to exist as a product. If a company is going to scan for software, just scanning for open source software has no business case.

    Perhaps I am dense, but this just doesn't seem to make any sense, even as a direct attack on the open s

  • Some outfits disallow Open Source applications. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by itomato ( 91092 ) on Thursday July 12, 2007 @04:03PM (#19842813)
    Even among the companies that will allow just any ol' user to install applications, there are some who have policies against applications that don't come from above.

    This could just as easily work in favor of Open Source applications. If typical scans reveal popular apps, and those popular apps are the ones people use with great success, and there are eyes that open to the fact that they too, use Open Source applications, that they are among their favorites, and exactly what Open Source applications are.

    In the event that a corporate IT manager looks at some such report, and says to a CTO, "Look, CTO - I told you our Open Source software initiative would work". "Our users are spending 75% of their sanctioned computer time in such applications as Open Office, Thunderbird, and GAIM." "The supplemental reports I have generated show the remaining 25% divided between other Non-Open applications; iTunes, Spybot Search and Destroy, AdAware, ClickMeFun2000.exe, Solitaire.exe, and these commercial products to allow Windows users to our UNIX services."

    That's a conversation I'm looking forward to having, because I'm anxious to deliver the punchline!

    Persistant home folders on a SAN, with an imaged Linux Desktop! Yes, we can even have anti-virus..

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