Once a territory of a select few developers, researchers and engineers open source is now embraced and supported by government and large software corporations.
Today when I was writing my technical report I came across the article “The Growth of Open Source Software in Organizations”. It is an excellent resource for getting the state-of-the-art information for the open source growth in industry and its implications. The following point in the executive summary reflects (based on the survey of about 512 companies) the super linear growth of open source software development:
“Organizations are saving millions of dollars on IT by using open source software. In 2004, open source software saved large companies (with annual revenue of over $1 billion) an average of $3.3 million. Medium-sized companies (between $50 million and $1 billion in annual revenue) saved an average $1.1 million. Firms with revenues under $50 million saved an average $520,000. Asked to categorize all the benefits (cost savings and other) from open source, most companies said they were moderate or major. Some 70% of large firms are seeing moderate or major benefits from open source. Of the companies under $1 billion in revenue, 59% are seeing major benefits.”
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