Gartner Open Source Software Survey Reveals OSS Adoption Trends And Initiatives

Gartner published a report in early February which revealed that more than half of the organizations surveyed have adopted Open Source Software(OSS) as part of their IT strategy but only one-third of the responding organizations had a formal OSS policy in place. Gartner OSS surveys from the past 5 years reveals that OSS has increased from less than 10 percent of responding organization's portfolio to more than the expected 30 percent within the next 18 months. The perceived value of adopting OSS as part of IT strategy has also changed over the years from purely TCO benefits to benefits accumulated from flexibility, increased innovation, shorter development times and faster procurement processes.

For the 2010 survey, Gartner conducted a survey of 547 leaders of organizations across 11 countries from July 2010 to August 2010.  In the last survey from 2008, 274 end-user organizations were surveyed of which 85 percent had adopted OSS but almost 69 percent did not have any formal policy in place for OSS usage which means huge potential liabilities for intellectual-property violations.