| It's not just Linux: Open Source has arrived |
Sep. 05, 2006
Open-source true believers have been saying forever that open source is the way to develop software. It turns out they've convinced most programmers that they're right. According to a newly released IDC study, open source isn't just hype; it's now the way most developers make software.
The study, which analyzed IDC surveys from over 5,000 developers in 116 countries in the spring of 2006, found that developers worldwide are increasing their use of open source. IDC found that open source-software is being used by 71 percent of the developers in the world and is in production at 54 percent of their organizations. In addition, half of the global developers claim that the use of open source is increasing in their organizations.
The study, entitled "Open Source in Global Software: Market Impact, Disruption, and Business Models," wasn't just of open-source-friendly companies like IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and Sun. It also checked in on the open-source business models and developers of Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, CA, AOL, Amazon, and Perot Systems. The results? One way or the other, open-source methods and software are used almost everywhere.
Open source is so pervasive that IDC declares in this study that open-source software represents the most significant all-encompassing and long-term trend that the software industry has seen since the early 1980s. IDC analysts also believe that open source will eventually play a role in the life-cycle of every major software category, and will fundamentally change the value proposition of packaged software for customers.
Specifically, IDC predicts that over the next ten years, open source will lead to vicious software price competition. While end-users will see that effect, IDC's analysts think that the overall effect of open source on the entire life-cycle of software invention and innovation will be even more important.
IDC also believes that despite all the hullabaloo over GPL 2 vs. GPL 3 and other open-source licenses, business models are what are really going to matter in open source's future. For all practical purposes, there will be only three business models that matter: the software revenue model, such as in SugarCRM; the public collective model, such as in Ubuntu or Apache; and the service broker model, which Novell and Red Hat have adopted.
"The use of open source beyond Linux is pervasive, used by almost three-quarters of organizations and spanning hundreds of thousands of projects," said Dr. Anthony Picardi, IDC's senior vice president of global software research in a statement. "The real impact of open source is to sustain innovations in mature software markets, thus extending the useful life of software assets and saving customers money."
"As business requirements shift from acquiring new customers to sustaining existing ones, the competitive landscape will move towards costs savings and serving up sustaining innovations to savvy customers, along with providing mainstream software to new market segments that are willing to pay only a fraction of conventional software license fees," Picardi added. "Open source software is ultimately a resource for sustaining innovators."
Of course, open-source friends could have told them that long ago. Now, however, even corporate IT analysis has caught on to the fact that Linux and open source has fundamentally changed how software is both developed and sold.
That hasn't, however, stopped open-source enemies from doing their darnedest to throw roadblocks into its ways. A perfect example of that happened last week.
Microsoft Corporate VP Gerri Elliott, who oversees Microsoft's public sector business, also sits on the U.S. Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Elliott managed to strike from a recent report language that advocated incentives to promote the development of open-source and open-content projects at universities and colleges across the U.S. after the report had been voted on.
While Microsoft may have won its battle with a committee, however, IDC's results show that it's losing the programming war as more and more programmers are flocking to open source.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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