Open Source Census: OSS Adoption Rising in Government and Finance

by Sam Dean - Sep. 30, 2008Comments (2)

The Open Source Census has released results from its ongoing tracking of open source trends, and there are some interesting data points being reported.  Founded by OpenLogic, the Open Source Census has a number of sponsors, including market research firm IDC, and is global in scale. Among several notable findings, the census is reporting that government and financial services companies show the highest use of open source per machine scanned. Here are more details.

According to census results "on average, government agencies have 123 different open source packages installed per machine; financial services companies have 117 different packages installed per machine." Given that this data is per machine, it points to very strong adoption of open source in these sectors.

Other data points reported include:

"Europe shows the highest usage of open source, with the United States lagging behind. For example, the U.S. averages 51 open source packages per machine and Europe averages 68 packages per machine."

"There is a significant amount of open source software used on Windows. Participants scanning Windows machines averaged 39 open source software packages per machine scanned.  Linux users found more open source, with 87 packages on average, but that also includes open source that is shipped with the Linux distributions.  The most popular packages are similar for both Windows and Linux platforms with 7 of the top 10 packages in common."

"OpenOffice has been found on 73 percent of personal machines scanned vs. 28 percent of enterprise machines scanned. The Census will be able to track if this personal use drives increased business use over time."

The data on high European adoption of open source agrees with survey results from Actuate reported here yesterday. Numerous other studies have also echoed the data on increases in government adoption of open source. There are many more findings available at the Open Source Census site.


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2 Comments
 

With the meltdown in Financial Services, I am sure the CIOs (Info officers, not the soon-to-be-jobless 'Investment Officers') will be looking to FOSS more and more.....

0 Votes

Yup. Just one more way (apart from making sure the Republicans don't take office in Jan) to get some relief from this hole that George W. and gang has dug us into

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