The Linux Foundation Introduces FOSS Bar Code Tracker

The Linux Foundation (News - Alert), the nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux, has introduced Linux Foundation FOSS Bar Code Tracker, which is built to offer an easy way to track open source components through the usage of an auto-generated, custom QR code for each product.

This new software tool is an open source project released under the MIT (News - Alert) license that caters to the needs of product development teams to develop their own FOSS Bill of Materials, identify FOSS components included in each product, and easily update and share that critical information throughout the supply chain for compliance purposes.

In addition, the new FOSS Bar Code Tracker even creates a one dimensional bar code, a QR code with data, or a QR code as a hot link, making essential information about a product's compliance available at the click of a button. QR code contains important information on the Free and Open Source (News - Alert) Software (FOSS) stack contained in a product, such as component names, version numbers, license information and links to download the source code, among other details.

"Through our Open Compliance Program, we've learned that companies desperately need a free software tool for tracking and reporting open source software components," said Jim Zemlin (News - Alert), executive director at The Linux Foundation.

 Zemlin said that the new FOSS Bar Code Scanner will drastically reduce the resources needed to track and report information about the software included in every product and instill even more confidence in the companies using Linux and open source software to compete in today's mobile and consumer electronics markets.

Additional features, introduced in the FOSS bar Code tracker, are the Compliance record manipulation feature to create, search, modify and cloning and also the advanced system configuration to configure company information, compliance contact information, front-end websites.