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Business Open Source Use Up 26% in One Year
CBR is reporting that open source use in the workplace is continuing to grow at an astonishing rate. Up 26% since last year, businesses are using 94 different open source tools to get the job done. "[OpenLogic's] breakdown of licenses for the top 25 packages found that Apache, not the GPL, is the most common license. 62% of the packages use Apache, 27% use some variant of GPL and 4% each use BSD, CPL, Eclipse, MPL and Perl licenses (since packages may be released under two or more licenses, percentages total to more than 100%).
"Enterprises on average used a whopping 94 different open source packages last year, compared to 75 in 2006..."
So they have more choice. They don't necessarily use them more often. It's like saying that you doubled the tools used because you took the screwdriver - but you simply used it once... Am I getting this right?
Of Code And Men
Perhaps the start of a recession (or recession talk) is leading to a second and third look at the question "could we get away with using FOSS software in this task?". Training costs are one thing. But, in a deep enough recession, people are looking to save their jobs. They'll learn whatever they are told to learn, and they'll do it on their own time (go read the FOSS community pages/wiki if need be). Those that can't, well, will be the first to be furloughed.
I am in a "graduate" program where we frequently get projects that require photo manipulation, presentations, etc. They also require us to work in groups. Since not everyone is from my same company we don't always have access to the same software to collaborate. I've been using this as an excuse to introduce people to things like GIMP and OpenOffice. The appeal of a free program that gets the specific tasks done that we need is pretty compelling. I don't know how many of them pass this kind of information on, but I know a few of them have gotten hooked.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
This may be a stretch, but after Microsoft Vista, I think the business community could be losing confidence in Microsoft's future. They might fear that if they use MS products, they could lose support and there would be no one left to assume liability.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard