Open Source Adoption Survey Results

Actuate has released the results from its 2009 Open Source Survey, which examines trends related to open source software awareness and adoption, and benefits and barriers to adoption. This year's survey, which included feedback from nearly 1500 IT and business professionals, provided for the first time respondence from China, in addition to North America, the UK, Germany, and France. Among the more noteworthy results are:

• 80.3% of those surveyed in China are using open source software.
• Interestingly, 72.6% of respondents in China said they had "access" to source code. This compares to 41.4% in Germany, 39.9% in North America, 36% in France, and 35.2% in the UK.
• 67.0% of those surveyed in France are using open source, leading all other European countries counted.
• 41% of respondents in North America are already using open source with nearly 1/10 either in the process of adopting or planning to adopt. The proportion of respondents who feel that the benefits of open source software outweigh the inhibitors (56.8%) is nearly seven times higher than the proportion that disagree (8.4%). This is more positive than in previous surveys.
• Germany's attitudes to open source adoption seems to be more positive than the UK. For example, the proportion of UK respondents who feel that the benefits of open source software outweigh the inhibitors has decreased this year to 47.0% (from 54.0% in 2008), whereas Germany scores 62.0% in favor of open source, an increase since last year's survey.
• The UK shows little change since last year with just over 42.1% already using open source software. Significantly, the UK continues to demonstrate a degree of reticence towards open source adoption with 22.4% still monitoring developments, but not yet evaluating.

In general, open source interest/adoption continues to trend upwards slightly, at least compared to previous Actuate surveys. The main perceived benefit of open source software across the board is no license costs. According to Gartner, "By 2010, 90% of Global 2000 organizations will have formal open-source acquisition and management strategies."

As founder and co-lead of the Eclipse BIRT project, (short for "Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools"), Actuate is deep into open source. The 2009 Actuate Open Source Survey is conducted independently by Survey Interactive and now into its fourth year.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 12:38 PM  Permalink