Future of Open Source Bright

Results from the fifth annual Future of Open Source Survey were released this week and the future looks bright. Open source is now "fully embraced by both the public and private sectors, and is being implemented across a wide variety of markets and applications such as social publishing and big data" according to the study.  

Key findings include: 

- Respondents identified SaaS, cloud and mobile as the main areas that will impact open source and that are driving growth.

- In 2010 there were 3,800 new open source based projects in mobile, with 94% targeting Android and Apple iOS, more than double the number in 2009.

- There are now more than 470 open source projects targeting cloud computing.

- 56 percent of respondents believe that more than half of software purchases made in the next five years will be open source.

- 95 percent of respondents noted that a turbulent economy continues to be "good" for OSS, though for the first year ever, lower cost has been overtaken by freedom from vendor lock-in as what makes OSS more attractive.

"When we started this survey five years ago, open source was still a movement that was in its nascent stages and its future was promising but still unknown," said Michael Skok, general partner, North Bridge Venture Partners. "The results of this year's survey clearly demonstrate that open source has gone mainstream not just within the vendor community, but within customer organizations of all types and sizes. Based on what we are seeing from our investments, it's exciting to see new growth driven by the inherent benefits of open source like community-driven innovation and from fast growing markets such as cloud and mobile computing."