Number of Open Source Users Continue to Climb

According to a recent article in eWEEK Europe, their readers have given a resounding thumbs-up to open source software. In a poll they conducted, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of the respondents use open source to some extent, with fifty percent of them using it in major production systems or wherever possible.

Of the 35% who were not favorably disposed to open source software, 13% said "it can't be trusted." They also acknowledged that they had never used open source software. That's like asking someone who has never driven a car or flown an airplane why they don't. You can expect them to also say "they can't be trusted." See eWeek Europe.

Of the others who were not favorable disposed to open source software, 12% of respondents simply preferred proprietary software, while 7% admit that they would use open source if only they weren’t locked into a proprietary software contract. Expect many of them to start using open source software in the coming years.

The results repeat those of other polls which have found an increasingly large proportion of the population around the globe are favorably disposed to open source software and use these products regularly, e.g. Java, OpenOffice, FireFox, MySQL, Drupal, etc.  In fact, the numbers of those individuals and organizations using open source solutions may even be higher than recent polls show.

According to a Cenatic Foundation's report on the International Status of Open Source Software, "the extent to which open source software (OSS) has been adopted and developed varies a great deal among the different geographical regions of the world." This variability is correlated with the degree to which the information society (IS) has developed in that region. The report states that "the United States, Australia and the Western European countries lead the development and adoption of open source software." In addition, the level of OSS adoption and development in India, China and Brazil was higher than expected.

To read selected reports, studies, or white papers on the use of open source software from Actuate, AMIA, Cenatic Foundation, the European Commission and others, go to the Open Health New (OHN) web site and its list of freely available publications. The list of publications includes many reports that relate specifically to the health care industry.