How Big US Firms Use Open Source Software

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 22, 2012 @09:26AM from the filling-the-gaps-in-the-walls dept.

Diomidis Spinellis writes "We hear a lot about the adoption of open source software, but when I was asked to provide hard evidence there was little I could find. In a recent article we tried to fill this gap by examining the type of software the U.S. Fortune 1000 companies use in their web-facing operations. Our study shows that the adoption of OSS in large U.S. companies is significant and is increasing over time through a low-churn transition, advancing from applications to platforms, and influenced by network effects. The adoption is likelier in larger organizations and is associated with IT and knowledge-intensive work, operating efficiencies, and less productive employees. Yet, the results were not what I was expecting."

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They are afraid of GPL by postmortem · 2012-03-22 09:39 · Score: 5, Interesting

Most companies are afraid to derive products from projects with GPL license, in fear that they will have to share all their code (even unrelated) with customers, and that exact obligation from license is unclear, and might change in court.
Now, article seems to be more about using SW tools developed with GPL license; not developing their own products from GPL components. That is lesser issue.