OStatic

As has been true for quite some time now, economic malaise and the maturity of applications and platforms are continuing to boost the market for open source software. Those trends are also helping to build a healthy ecosystem for commercial open source companies, and enterprise adoption of open source. Today, market researchers at IDC are reporting on a new study that predicts that worldwide revenue from open source software will grow at a 22.4 percent compound annual growth rate to reach $8.1 billion by 2013. Here are some of the other key findings.

With all that goes on at conferences, it would seem that a white paper presentation would be, invariably, a pretty dry event -- with the document itself being even drier. While there are many topics in the Linux Foundation-sponsored IDC white paper, The Opportunity for Linux in a New Economy (linked here as a PDF), and one might choose to quickly skim the research, data and projections, this report is really well worth taking a close look through.

Overall, IDC is a projecting a rosy future for Linux-related growth in the enterprise, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.6% for the 2008-2013 period. The overall market is projected to experience a 5% growth rate over that same time frame.