Employers and Developers Alike Are Favoring Open Source

by Sam Dean - Apr. 16, 2010Comments (1)

As Matt Asay notes today, there is a shift going on in favored programming languages, and it's skewing heavily toward open source. The implications of that trend are significant. We've done posts before, for example, on how open source skills can arm a college graduate looking for tech work, or a recently laid off worker, with powerful calling cards for finding employment. The evidence keeps stacking up that when it comes to many types of platform software, such as content management systems, there is a growing skew toward open source offerings.

Asay notes that Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond, speaking at this week's 2010 Palmetto Open Source Conference, said that the new generation of developers are more familiar with Ruby or PHP than Java or .Net, and that they increasingly favor Linux over Windows or Unix for enterprise applications. "Interest in open source is no longer simply about cheap software," he writes.

That's true, and it's also true that employers are increasingly focused on open source software and development languages. Just look at this chart from Indeed.com showing available job trends involving open source content management systems:

Also from Indeed.com, look at the growth in PHP- and Ruby-related available jobs:

Clearly, there is growing interest from employers in open source programming languages and platforms, not just from developers. I tend to agree with Asay that it will take time for these trends to lead to a seismic shift toward open source, but as long as the developers and employers, in tandem, favor open source, there is no stopping the shift.