IDC study explores the issues raised by the open source software phenomenon and comes to some surprisingly conclusions.
According to Dr. Anthony Picardi, senior vice president, Global Software, who analyzed IDC surveys from over 5,000 developers from 116 countries, “The use of open source beyond Linux is pervasive, used by almost three-quarters of organizations and spanning hundreds of thousands of projects. Although open source will significantly reduce the industry opportunity over the next 10 years, 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. Three distinct business models are identified that differ by their revenue potential, architectural control, and socioeconomic motivations.”