Surveys Show Increase In OSS Popularity

segphault writes "Ars Technica takes a look at the results of two different surveys about open source software adoption." From the article: "The survey also addresses the most important question: what motivates organizations to adopt open source software? According to Optaros, cost savings is one of the most significant factors. Optaros says that companies with over US$1 billion annual revenue reported average savings of $3.3 million in 2004 as a result of open source technology, and companies with annual revenue between $50 million and $1 billion reported an average savings of $1.1 million."

Comments

in todays news

[Anonymous Coward]

studies show that studies about the obvious reveal obvious facts.

Money vs Reason - Money wins

[chriss]

I think we can assume that there may be thousands of good reasons for something, but reaching for peoples wallets will convince them much easier. Stopping smoking will make you healthier, driving a beetle instead of an SUV will slow down further global warming, switching to open source will increase security and flexibility.

But Norway reduced the number of smokers by massively increasing tobacco tax, people demand more efficient cars now the oil prices are way up and the main reason for OSS adaption is cost saving.

It's interesting that the article mentions another study by IDC in Europe (instead of one by Optaros and InformationWeek querying American companies) with different results:

The results of this survey contrast sharply with the results of a similar survey conducted in Europe by IDC. According to the results of the IDC survey, which used data collected from over 600 companies, quality and flexibility (rather than cost savings) are driving open source adoption in Europe.

But then most European countries signed the Kyoto treaty.

Re:Money vs Reason - Money wins

[Gene77]

I agree. There is a healthy Darwinian struggle here toward which financial savings factor.

I work for a private graduate school of about one thousand students. We are not exceedingly wealthy. That is to say that finances are a big deal around here. Over time, we found ourselves continually in the position of "We have the skill and talent to do this, but we cannot afford it."

Over time, through the influence of myself and others, along with judicious hiring practices, we now have 50% of the machines in our server room running Debian. It is used for database servers running PostgreSQL (to which we also successfully moved some legacy Informix data stores), to our web servers running Apache/PHP5, to various networking devices (VLANs get complex with supporting some student housing, internet cafes, open wireless, library access, student lab, classrooms and administration), to proxy servers, and to miscellany.

So many of these projects were implementations that we sketched, scoped, vendor-checked, and found that we are saving tens of thousands a year (which is a lot to us). Open Source solutions closed the gap between "can do" and "can't do" in many situations.

Additionally, there is a lot of positive energy among our technologists regarding Open Source software. Not everyone wants to be a vendor extension. This team is engaged and optimistic about many complex challenges. This has been a boon for our productivity since our project lists keep growing.

I used to work in a larger company (a global HR firm of 12,000 employees at the time) doing revenue and HR forecasting software development, as well as managing projects and nearly 20 developers. I keep in touch with them and I see my old coworkers propping up silent Linux clusters that just work and work and work. I mention this, because I can empirically verify that the gains of Open Source scale well in both directions organizationally.

Cost should be one of the least important benefits

[ZephyrXero]

It's kind of sad people think of "cost savings" as one of the biggest benefits... Freedom to use your software they way you want, the ability to fix things if you need to, the ability to make sure there's nothing hidden in the code that you may not want... These are things that should be topping that list, but I guess for a business where "the bottom line" is the most important thing for you, that's all we can really hope for :/

Re:Cost should be one of the least important benef

[ZachPruckowski]

Freedom to use your software they way you want, the ability to fix things if you need to, the ability to make sure there's nothing hidden in the code that you may not want... These are things that should be topping that list

That's what counts to you, and to a lot of us /.ers, but really, the general public cares about (in no order):

1) How much does it cost?
2) Does it do what I need?
3) Is it easy?
4) If it breaks, will someone fix it for me?

Re:conclusion

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

European companies seem to value the flexibility of open source solutions, while American companies value the savings.

In other news, most European corporate executives plan to be working for the same company in twenty years, when the largest benefits of OSS make a difference.

American business is about making money now and getting out with the cash before it all falls apart. Thus, American executives don't care about long-term savings and strategic benefits.

Savings?

[bean123456789]

So if I did my super swell math correctly 3.3 Million to 1 Billon is .33%

Not what I would call a great savings. That is just a drop in the bucket for these companies, they probably spend more on office supplies.

TCO FUD

[lheal]

Of course OSS is cheaper up front; but cost of ownership includes how much it costs to actually use the software.

TCO also includes

• Cost of add-in "security" software made necessary by the monoculture
• Cost of actual security breaches
• Labor cost of managing licenses (often hidden in TCO studies)
• The cost built in to the hardware by the vendor for supplying the OS on it
• Cost (both financial and emotional) of lockups, reboots, and other bugs
• Cost for people who should be working to sit on hold trying to reach the understaffed help desk

Yep, it's important to look at the whole picture.

Re:Money that should have gone to developers...

[Hope Thelps]

I for one can't understand why the software industry is basically the ONLY ONE giving away the result of its work and talent.

It isn't. You just wrote an opinion and gave it away. Think of all those poor starving opinion writers for newspapers and magazines. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Re:Cost should be one of the least important benef

[plopez]

What gets me is point #4. The software arena is littered with orhaned software. The best way to insure you have an unsupported application is to buy a proprietary closed source software package. Oracle, MS, SAP, Peoplesoft all force you to either to upgrade or lose support. Companies get bought out by rivals and product lines get slashed. Companies go out of business and their clients have no access to the source. That is a huge risk. I think more user education/manager education is needed as to the risks of proprietary closed source software.