This is one of the more notable results of the 2008 Future of Open Source survey conducted by North Bridge Venture Partners in partnership with Acquia, Ingres, SugarCRM, Sun and Ubuntu. The results were presented at the 2008 Infoworld Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco last March as part of a panel discussion led by Michael Skok, general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners.

Survey respondents included OSBC attendees and customers of the companies represented on the panel. The survey covered issues affecting the open source sector, such as the current economic downturn, delivery and pricing models, and key market drivers. Respondents were also asked to comment on predictions regarding the types of companies that will be instrumental in commercial open source success as well as those which will be greatly affected by open source.

The survey results highlight the following findings: approximately 81 percent of respondents feel the economy’s turbulence is "good" for open source software; the top three factors that make open source software attractive are lower acquisition and maintenance costs, flexibility and access to libraries of community-developed codes, and freedom from vendor lock-in provisions; more than 55 percent of respondents believe that in five years, 25 to 50 percent of purchased software will be open source; respondents expect the Web publishing and Content Management market to be most vulnerable to disruption brought about by open source; and respondents, on the other hand, expect the Security Tools market to be least vulnerable to disruption by open source software in the next five years.

Growing Acceptance for Open Source

Moreover, the survey results illustrate an increasing acceptance rate among consumer and business end users for open source software. This positive outlook helps allay fears from business customers who hesitate to use open source because of uncertainty over its future. Worldwide economic turbulence seems to contribute to its growth, as companies are forced to look toward open source software for lower costs.

While low acquisition and maintenance costs figure as the number one reason for the attractiveness of open source, a major reason for using open source in industry, as well as in governments appears to be the open access to the source code, as well as freedom from vendor lock-in.

Open source guarantees better security because it opens the code to public scrutiny. Contrary to common perceptions, publicly documented code ends up to be less vulnerable to breaches. Thus, IT professionals are more likely to trust it over closed source software. In fact, so great is the value attached to the openness of source code that companies do not mind paying for open source software.

At Par With Proprietary Software

The survey results also lead us to believe that not only is open source software here to stay, it will continue to be a huge threat to the proprietary software industry. Open source software used to have a reputation that it is an inferior copycat to Microsoft software. While this could be well justified some ten years ago, it does not hold true today. As more and more IT managers are beginning to prefer Linux over other operating systems , and as newly released versions of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) and OpenOffice.org (version 3) continue to get great reviews, no longer can the words, "inferior," "insecure," or "insufficient for real business needs" be justly associated with open source.

The President and CEO of Ingres Corporation, Roger Burkhardt, believes that the open source movement is the key driver in the current evolution of the software industry. John Roberts, chairman, CEO and co-founder, SugarCRM, says, "the age of proprietary, closed software is nearing its end.... It’s critical that customers have as many software solution options as possible, such as on-demand, on-site and appliance-based solutions."

"Cooperation, consensus and community are the primary drivers of open source," said Mark Shuttleworth, Founder, Ubuntu. "The visibility and importance of open source continue to grow, and we continue to see innovation in the business models, licensing and governance structures that drive the free software platform.

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