[ox-en] floss has become the biggest IT firm
- From: Geert Lovink <geert xs4all.nl>
- Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:36:48 +0200
http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39201838,00.htm
Open source software is successfully displacing proprietary applications
in many large companies and eating into the annual revenues of
proprietary software vendors by $60bn per year, according to research.
According to the study from the Standish Group called Trends in Open
Source, released this week, the losses of proprietary software makers
are disproportionate to the actual spend on open source software, which
is a mere six per cent of an estimated worldwide spend of $1tr per year.
The researchers put this difference down to the fact a large proportion
of open source isn't paid for - an intended result of the open source
licensing structure.
Standish Group chairman, Jim Johnson, said in a statement: "Open source
software is raising havoc throughout the software market. It is the
ultimate in disruptive technology."
The study, the result of five years of research, states if open source
products and services were calculated at commercial prices, open source
as a whole would be equivalent to the largest software company in the
world, with revenues exceeding the combined income of Microsoft, Oracle
and Computer Associates.
The open source community's programmer-hours, if added up, would place
it as the largest software employer in the world, the study said. The
company found that open source software, once used primarily for
low-level needs, has moved up the chain. Open source is often brought in
to cover a project's basic requirements; creating a "baseline". But
increasingly often, no further proprietary software is needed to fulfil
more advanced requirements, the report found.
The study states: "In many cases, especially in infrastructure software,
the baseline is a fully developed and working system. Many applications
and service components are fully functional and can be used immediately.
Other applications and components provide a firm baseline around which
to develop a more elaborate system."
The Standish Group found 11 per cent of all new commercial software
requirements are satisfied by open source solutions and components. That
figure doesn't include application service providers (ASPs) that use
open source to service their clients.
Such findings are a telling insight into the ways open source can be
seen as a threat by large software companies such as IBM, according to
Dave Rosenberg, chief executive of open source start-up MuleSource.
Rosenberg told silicon.com sister site, CNET News.com: "IBM is
threatened by open-source SOA [service-oriented architecture] tools as
many of them meet the full requirements enterprises look for. This
baseline notion is interesting as products like JBoss used to be
considered just for development with BEA for production but over the
last two years or so that sentiment has changed, with lots of JBoss in
production."
Original article: Proprietary vendors lose £30bn to open source from
ZDNet UK
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39397439,00.htm
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