Released on: October 2, 2008, 8:24 am

Press Release Author: Jill Ratkevic

Industry: Software

Press Release Summary: SourceLabs shrinks long tail of data, making open source
support simpler.

Press Release Body: SEATTLE, WA – October 2, 2008 – SourceLabs, the company
innovating support and search technology for open source software, today announced
the top ten most prevalent support issues and search data for supporting Linux and
Open Source Java for the month of September 2008. The report is compiled from
monthly searches performed by users of SourceLabs’ Self-Support Suite
(http://webui.sourcelabs.com).

With an over 400% growth in data month over month, SourceLabs’ repository search
returns results that represent the number of times a particular request for support
using a specific open source technology or project was searched on. SourceLabs’ 20
million+ object repository provides support answers to issues reported in over 150
open source software projects. In addition to open source software tools for IT
administrators and developers, SourceLabs provides professional enterprise-wide
software support contracts for Linux and open source Java enterprises, providing
them with a vendor-neutral way to support open source technologies.

“Open source software is a marketplace in which anyone can participate and it is
that openness that creates one of the biggest challenges to support,” said Byron
Sebastian, CEO of SourceLabs. “The fundamental way open source is developed and
disseminated translates into a very broad distribution of demand, a broad
distribution of development talent and, by extension, more potential solutions and
approaches to solve problems. Yet this very ‘long tail’ creates a very broad set of
specific problems and multiple solutions that are increasingly difficult to locate.
SourceLabs’ Self-Support search technology makes this extremely long tail work for
users by finding very specific fixes to their very specific issues using advanced
algorithms and filtering technologies.”

In August, SourceLabs’ introduced hardware recognition and the search engine now
correlates hardware data to all known bugs and dependences, creating the most
accurate and precise service for troubleshooting and researching open source
software available. SourceLabs Self-Support Suite is available as standalone
software for individuals and for enterprises running open source software as part of
a support contract or additionally, SourceLabs’ 20 million+ object repository can be
combined with an organization’s internal data stores that are specific to large
enterprise environments.
SourceLabs’ search technology represents a significant breakthrough in discovering,
navigating, ranking and quickly filtering all known issues, bugs and software
updates for the most popular open source Java and Linux software projects (a
complete list of covered projects is available here:
http://www.sourcelabs.com/?page=supported). Collecting the most up–to-date
information available from all relevant sources, SourceLabs’ Intelligence Engine
automatically indexes, tags, manages, and stores the information in a repository
based on the relevance to a users’ specific environment and configuration. Using its
data gathering tools together with sophisticated pattern matching and natural
language processing, SourceLabs’ predictive analysis algorithms then match data
against the Information Repository to provide immediate answers.
The top ten most prevalent searches for development issues related to open source
development software are:
1. rhel (redhat enterprise linux) 5.78%
2. error 4.79%
3. xen 4.53%
4. ubuntu 4.44%
5. failed 3.34%
6. linux 3.12%
7. redhat 3.08%
8. suse 3.03%
9. samba 2.95%
10. fedora 2.89%
To learn more about the technology and how it works to support enterprise open
source deployments or to try SourceLabs’ Self-Support search technology, visit
(http://webui.sourcelabs.com).
About SourceLab’s Support Research Labs The SourceLabs Open Source Software
Research Lab specializes in the discovery and analysis of vulnerabilities (i.e.,
security holes, bugs, maligned features or combination of operations) and software
support issues. The research team actively researches new approaches and software,
creating and testing new bugs and other software issues on a constant basis and
supporting SwiK.net, a catalog of information about thousands of open source
projects.
About SourceLabs
SourceLabs is innovating open source software support. The Seattle-based company
provides a complete set of software integration, testing, support and maintenance
solutions. The company’s dependable Open Source Systems vision proposes a new model
for the software industry, one that frees software buyers from proprietary lock-in
while delivering highly reliable software and support. For more information, please
go to www.sourcelabs.com. The company runs the open source Swik project,
www.swik.net, that catalogs over 10,000 open source projects for an audience of over
1 million unique visitors per month.
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SourceLabs is a trademark of SourceLabs Inc. All other trademarks and trade names
are the property of their respective owners.



Web Site: http://www.sourcelabs.com

Contact Details: jill ratkevicSourceLabs Inc.
411 First Ave S. Suite 750
Seattle, WA 98104
jill@sourcelabs.com
408-209-5181