Actuate Survey: Open Source Booming in China, Germany and Other Regions

It's no secret that certain parts of the world favor open source more than others do. Today, Actuate, which specializes in open source business intelligence applications, is out with its fourth annual open source survey results. The results are based on responses from global business and I.T. professionals from the financial services sector, public sector and the manufacturing industry. This year the survey also included Chinese respondents. Here are some of the highlights from the results.

According to Actuate's survey results:

"China reveals high adoption rates with a large majority of those surveyed (80.3%) using open source software. In all regions surveyed the main perceived benefit of open source software is no licence costs."

Four out of five respondents in China are using open source? That seems very high. By contrast, in North America, 41 percent of respondents said they are using open source. The numbers for the U.K. were roughly in line with North American findings. There, 42.1 percent of respondents said they are using open source. However, 67 percent of French respondents said they are, and 60 percent of German respondents said they are--high numbers.

The U.K. has historically had a welcoming attitude toward open source, but Actuate's findings suggest that there may be a decline there. "The proportion of U.K. respondents who feel that the benefits of open source software outweigh the inhibitors has decreased this year to 47 percent (from 54 percent in 2008)."

You can view more findings from Actuate's survey here.