The Reasons Businesses Use Open Source Are Changing Faster Than You Realize

It's no longer about cheap, commodity software. According to new research, it's about driving innovation through participation. Open-source software, once used primarily because it was cheap and "good enough," now gets top ranking for delivering high quality, according to the latest Future of Open Source survey.

While lowering costs remains the top reason companies elect to participate in open-source projects, they now view open source as a way to drive innovation, shorten time to market, and improve the quality of their software. This is the eighth year that Black Duck Software, a company that offers open-source software and consulting services, has conducted the survey.

The deeper meaning of this year’s survey: For the first time in a long, long time, companies care about source code again...