Open source improves efficiency, interoperability, and innovation according to the latest open source survey from North Bridge and Black Duck.
The companies today released results of their annual “Future of Open Source” study, which examines open source software trends. These results show open source as “today’s preeminent architecture, the foundation for nearly all applications, operating systems, cloud computing, databases, and big data,” according to the announcement.
Overall, the use of open source software (OSS) increased in 65 percent of companies surveyed. The reasons given for using OSS include: quality of solutions, competitive features, and the ability to customize and fix the software. Additionally, 90 percent of this year’s respondents say that open source improves efficiency, interoperability, and innovation.
Specifically:
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More than 65 percent leverage open source software (OSS) to speed application development
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More than 55 percent leverage OSS for production infrastructure
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65 percent of companies also contribute to open source projects, mainly in order to fix bugs or add functionality to a project
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67 percent actively encourage developers to engage in and contribute to open source projects
Challenges remain, however:
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50 percent of companies surveyed have no formal policy for choosing open source code
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47 percent have no formal process in place to track open source code
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And, nearly one-third of companies have no process for identifying, tracking or remediating known open source vulnerabilities
Looking ahead, respondents say that, in the next 2-3 years, the main revenue-generating business models for open source vendors will be: software-as-a-service (46 percent); custom development (42 percent), and services/support (41 percent).
These results come from 1,313 respondents in 64 countries. You can see the full results here.
