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Surveys Show Increase In OSS Popularity 109

Posted by Zonk from the popular-penguins dept.
segphault writes "Ars Technica takes a look at the results of two different surveys about open source software adoption." From the article: "The survey also addresses the most important question: what motivates organizations to adopt open source software? According to Optaros, cost savings is one of the most significant factors. Optaros says that companies with over US$1 billion annual revenue reported average savings of $3.3 million in 2004 as a result of open source technology, and companies with annual revenue between $50 million and $1 billion reported an average savings of $1.1 million."
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Surveys Show Increase In OSS Popularity More

Surveys Show Increase In OSS Popularity

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  • in todays news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20, 2006 @06:26PM (#14522691)
    studies show that studies about the obvious reveal obvious facts.

  • Money vs Reason - Money wins (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chriss ( 26574 ) * <chriss@memomo.net> on Friday January 20, 2006 @06:27PM (#14522700) Homepage

    I think we can assume that there may be thousands of good reasons for something, but reaching for peoples wallets will convince them much easier. Stopping smoking will make you healthier, driving a beetle instead of an SUV will slow down further global warming, switching to open source will increase security and flexibility.

    But Norway reduced the number of smokers by massively increasing tobacco tax, people demand more efficient cars now the oil prices are way up and the main reason for OSS adaption is cost saving.

    It's interesting that the article mentions another study by IDC in Europe (instead of one by Optaros and InformationWeek querying American companies) with different results:

    The results of this survey contrast sharply with the results of a similar survey [dga.co.uk] conducted in Europe by IDC. According to the results of the IDC survey, which used data collected from over 600 companies, quality and flexibility (rather than cost savings) are driving open source adoption in Europe.
    But then most European countries signed the Kyoto treaty.

    • You'd think so, but... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      but reaching for peoples wallets will convince them much easier.

      Yea, that's what I thought when I founded my company. I was providing consulting and integration services. I tried to present my company as advantageous over other because while labor for a Windows server was the same as a Samba server, there was a >$700 savings with Samba and in some cases the savings would have been in the tens of thousands. I thought that I would be "selling" a lot of Samba. Boy was I wrong.

      One year out of the gate, I hav
      • Unfortunately, "free" carries a negative connotation in the business world: worthless.

        The smart thing to do is charge a f*sking fortune for something that is free. Make it a status symbol/exclusive/BS. The well-known red hat and IBM are perfect examples.

        Sounds crazy, but it's true. As you understand Linux is an **unbelievable** value for the SMB. Lack of cheap MCSA's makes "free" sound like a whole lot of trouble.

        Related story: I've got the small company I work for running linux for some things. My

        • Definitely true.

          I install a few servers for local people every now and again and frequently get mails asking me to come visit small companies to tighten up their networks.

          I could "sell" maybe a third of them on the idea of a caching-proxy server (squid) setup and managed for 400 UK pounds. Up the price to 700 and the uptake was higher.

          I felt bad for charging so much for free software, but if that is what it takes ..

    • Re:Money vs Reason - Money wins (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gene77 ( 90233 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @06:43PM (#14522835) Homepage
      I agree. There is a healthy Darwinian struggle here toward which financial savings factor.

      I work for a private graduate school of about one thousand students. We are not exceedingly wealthy. That is to say that finances are a big deal around here. Over time, we found ourselves continually in the position of "We have the skill and talent to do this, but we cannot afford it."

      Over time, through the influence of myself and others, along with judicious hiring practices, we now have 50% of the machines in our server room running Debian. It is used for database servers running PostgreSQL (to which we also successfully moved some legacy Informix data stores), to our web servers running Apache/PHP5, to various networking devices (VLANs get complex with supporting some student housing, internet cafes, open wireless, library access, student lab, classrooms and administration), to proxy servers, and to miscellany.

      So many of these projects were implementations that we sketched, scoped, vendor-checked, and found that we are saving tens of thousands a year (which is a lot to us). Open Source solutions closed the gap between "can do" and "can't do" in many situations.

      Additionally, there is a lot of positive energy among our technologists regarding Open Source software. Not everyone wants to be a vendor extension. This team is engaged and optimistic about many complex challenges. This has been a boon for our productivity since our project lists keep growing.

      I used to work in a larger company (a global HR firm of 12,000 employees at the time) doing revenue and HR forecasting software development, as well as managing projects and nearly 20 developers. I keep in touch with them and I see my old coworkers propping up silent Linux clusters that just work and work and work. I mention this, because I can empirically verify that the gains of Open Source scale well in both directions organizationally.
  • It's kind of sad people think of "cost savings" as one of the biggest benefits... Freedom to use your software they way you want, the ability to fix things if you need to, the ability to make sure there's nothing hidden in the code that you may not want... These are things that should be topping that list, but I guess for a business where "the bottom line" is the most important thing for you, that's all we can really hope for :/
    • Freedom to use your software they way you want, the ability to fix things if you need to, the ability to make sure there's nothing hidden in the code that you may not want... These are things that should be topping that list

      That's what counts to you, and to a lot of us /.ers, but really, the general public cares about (in no order):

      1) How much does it cost?
      2) Does it do what I need?
      3) Is it easy?
      4) If it breaks, will someone fix it for me?
      • It's precisely this kind of thinking on the part of the average consumer that leads them to purchase something familiar. It's also about brand recognition...people overestimate the consumer's desire to learn new software.

        An application that costs more, but seems to be easier to use, will draw more users than a cheap or free app that might be perceived to take more time to learn. In many cases, consumers will buy a more expensive piece of software simply because they recognize the brand, and already know

      • It doesn't matter so much that people don't want freedom for its own sake as long as they realise that freedom is what is making the software:
        1. cheaper
        2. designed to do what the users actually need and able to cater to a wider range of needs specific to certain types of user
        3. with a range of UIs/frontends designed to be easy for different users regardless of different physical, linguistic, or mental abilities in different areas, levels of familiarity or look-and-feel preferences
        4. less likely to break, easier to

      • Re:Cost should be one of the least important benef (Score:4, Insightful)

        by plopez ( 54068 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @10:37PM (#14524051) Journal
        What gets me is point #4. The software arena is littered with orhaned software. The best way to insure you have an unsupported application is to buy a proprietary closed source software package. Oracle, MS, SAP, Peoplesoft all force you to either to upgrade or lose support. Companies get bought out by rivals and product lines get slashed. Companies go out of business and their clients have no access to the source. That is a huge risk. I think more user education/manager education is needed as to the risks of proprietary closed source software.
    • It's kind of sad people think of "cost savings" as one of the biggest benefits... Freedom to use your software they way you want, the ability to fix things if you need to, the ability to make sure there's nothing hidden in the code that you may not want... These are things that should be topping that list, but I guess for a business where "the bottom line" is the most important thing for you, that's all we can really hope for

      I think you're introducing a false dichotomy. After all, why should a business care
      • >If you can convince a business that OSS will do more of what they need, will be more
        >cheaply repaired if it breaks, and they won't hemorrhage money through security holes,
        >they'll go with OSS

        I'm afraid that most enterprise experience with OSS is that there are just as many, if not more, reported security holes in (for instance) Linux than (for instance) Windows. I spend a good deal of my time explaining to management why that is a good thing - more reported security vulnerabilities means the OS i
    • Freedom to use your software they way you want, the ability to fix things if you need to, the ability to make sure there's nothing hidden in the code that you may not want... These are things that should be topping that list

      You're so right. Those would be very excellent benefits...if every user was also an ambitious coder with time to tweak, recompile, and test multiple complex software packages written in various compiled and interpreted languages.

      Unfortunately, most users just like to, well, _use_ things
    • Within the context of any one sourcing decision, the freedoms offered by OSS can be quantified as cost savings.

      "Freedom to use software the way you want" = productivity gains = don't have to hire more staff = cost saving.

      "The ability to fix things if you need to, the ability to make sure there's nothing hidden in the code that you may not want" - those freedoms are available with much (although by no means all) closed-source software: but only at a ridiculously high price. In a true apples-for-apples compar
    • Why is it sad? People like free stuff. It's not like big corporations are the only ones that like free stuff either. You listed some good benefits, but most non-programmers cannot do the things you listed. Why would you expect these to top the list of a survey that I assume was filled out by mostly non-programmers?

    • Re:Cost should be one of the least important benef (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In business, money is the meat of the matter.

      Everything else is gravey or icing on the cake.

      But OSS sure does make great gravey and icing.
    • Wouldn't it be great if we could all work for companies where the bottom line wasn't the most important thing.

      I personally think the cost factor is *the* reason OSS has gotten as far as it has. When the bubble burst, companies were hooked on their expensive software packages and products but couldn't afford the licensing anymore. OSS came to the rescue and along the way showed people that paying a lot for your software doesn't mean it's any better. People have found bottom line gains with OSS even excl

      • Don't skip the other cost issue, it wan't about how much the closed source proprietary software was costing to buy, it was also about how much it was really costing to use. The real long term cost over 10 years, continual update costs, continual retraining costs, failure of the product to achieve marketed abilities and of course the rampant failures in security and stability.

        This is really all about the development of a much more matured and experienced network purchasing executive. A lot of companies and

    • Why? Sure, standards are great (so good that Microsoft needs to make their own!), but we live in a money-driven society. Cost savings are the number one influence for almost any decision.

    • It's kind of sad people think of "cost savings" as one of the biggest benefits... Freedom to use your software they way you want, the ability to fix things if you need to, the ability to make sure there's nothing hidden in the code that you may not want...

      I agree with you, but the freedom to use a software package for your own reasons/goals is an important benefit of free software. I actually think of this attraction to low cost to be one of free software's greatest strentghs. People will come for the

  • cost of ownership (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dirvish ( 574948 ) <(dirvish) (at) (foundnews.com)> on Friday January 20, 2006 @06:29PM (#14522715) Homepage Journal
    Are the survey respondents taking cost of ownership into consideration? I see no mention of it in the article. Of course OSS is cheaper up front; but cost of ownership includes how much it costs to actually use the software. The real bargains are the OSS that is not only free up front, but also a better product than the alternatives (Apache comes to mind).
    • There have been "independant" studies that show the TCO of OSS to be much higher than that of Windows. We very quickly dismissed these as being funded by Micro$oft. Fair enough for Slashdot, but those are the reports that get media attention and they're what the PHBes read.

      What the OSS community really needs is a centralized place where businesses that have made "the switch" can provide testimonials about how much money they are really saving. It's hard to convince a PHB or beancounter *not* to believe s

    • TCO FUD (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lheal ( 86013 ) <lheal1999NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday January 20, 2006 @08:08PM (#14523413) Journal
      Of course OSS is cheaper up front; but cost of ownership includes how much it costs to actually use the software.

      TCO also includes

      • Cost of add-in "security" software made necessary by the monoculture
      • Cost of actual security breaches
      • Labor cost of managing licenses (often hidden in TCO studies)
      • The cost built in to the hardware by the vendor for supplying the OS on it
      • Cost (both financial and emotional) of lockups, reboots, and other bugs
      • Cost for people who should be working to sit on hold trying to reach the understaffed help desk

      Yep, it's important to look at the whole picture.

  • On the development side, there is nothing like outsourcing the development of your applications to thousands of developers for free. of course OSS is a viable market strategy, your code gets tightened up for at practically no cost. From the adoption standpoint, you don't really have to worry about software going stagnate and if it does, you always have the source to fall back on. OSS works great as long as you have the talent within your organization to support it.
  • there are stark differences in the conclusions, in the way US and Europe perceive OSS,

    Summing it: "European companies seem to value the flexibility of open source solutions, while American companies value the savings."

    That is good, but somewhat disturbing. Is US economy so money-centric despite its capitalistic nature?

    • Re:conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @06:40PM (#14522819)

      European companies seem to value the flexibility of open source solutions, while American companies value the savings.

      In other news, most European corporate executives plan to be working for the same company in twenty years, when the largest benefits of OSS make a difference.

      American business is about making money now and getting out with the cash before it all falls apart. Thus, American executives don't care about long-term savings and strategic benefits.

    • "That is good, but somewhat disturbing. Is US economy so money-centric despite its capitalistic nature?"

      What do you mean by "despite"? The capitalistic nature is exactly what would (and does) make it so money-centric.
      • I meant I knew the extent of capitalistic influence, but so much that it affected the decisions on OSS was somewhat a shock to me (considering the OSS scene is pretty active here)
    • Is US economy so money-centric despite its capitalistic nature?

      Despite? I would say it's because of the US's capitalistic economy. Plus, I'd say every economy is money-centric. It's pretty much the definition of the word...

      Secondly, why is this a bad thing? Businesses are just that--businesses. They deal in money and try to accumulate as much of it as possible. I'd say it's a pretty good idea for a business to do something because it'd save money.

      Finally, I'd take issue with the fact that Europ
      • Their motives are the same--make the most $$$.

        There's a trend to believe that in many businesses, not just American ones and it's why globalism, hypercapitalism etc are often reviled.

        It's not true of all businesses though. Many of us want to make the best quality product we can, and believe the money to be a consequence of quality.
    • Is US economy so money-centric despite its capitalistic nature?

      That statement seems to imply a world view completely different from what we see here in america ...I have only worked in the office of one american business, but there, the emphasis was cost-savings. It's all about spending less money, and recording the immediate value you just brought to the company. Justifying one's decisions by stating that your actions will reduce expendatures in a difficult to measure way, at some hazy point in the futur

  • According to Optaros, cost savings is one of the most significant factors.

    Quite a few people could have told you that for over a decade. I wonder why it took so long for OSS to catch on in the business world? Sure, Microsoft has had their monopoly, but I would have expected high-end businesses to quickly figure out there was a 'better way'. So, was it lack of awareness, lack of training, or something else?

    • 1. In the real world OSS HAS been catching on in business for many years. Like most things though it's been a gradual transition since people don't normally trash existing systems overnight unless the existing system is very broken. If some support company insists that in order to fix your DB server you will have to find another host for your file or dns server because combining them isn't supported then it's a lot faster to just put Linux on one of the old unused machines in the basement than to budget
    • According to Optaros, cost savings is one of the most significant factors.
      Quite a few people could have told you that for over a decade.

      No, few people would have told that because it was not true. Ten years ago, FOSS was more expensive than propietary software in most situations. And in fact, this is still the case sometimes.

      I wonder why it took so long for OSS to catch on in the business world?

      2) Inerty.
    • Not really. When Windows took over the desktop, it took them some odd 15 years. And they were not competing against a monopoly in that space. So, if Linux takes 15 years going against a company like MS, then it is a very impressive situation. I am also guessing that OSS will accelerate in the take over over the next 3 years.

  • Why switching will be slow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by saterdaies ( 842986 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @06:36PM (#14522783)
    While I believe that open-source products have many long-term benefits for a company (better legacy support, the ability to patch and make alterations as needed, long-term cost savings, etc), companies aren't going to switch immiedately. Why? Because switching costs a lot of money. Let's say I'm a business with 100 computers (desktops). I bought them from Dell and my employees use them. Let's say I want to switch them to Linux. Well, first, I've already paid for Windows (came with the Dells I bought) so I don't get that money back because I'm using Linux now. I also have to retrain workers to use the new systems (yes, those small problems like "Where's the My Documents folder" cost a lot of money for a large organization). So, switching is costing me money rather than saving it. In the long term, I could value the flexibility, free upgrades, etc. that Linux offers and believe that would be more profitable for me in the long run. Of course, on the server side, the situation is easier since if I'm going to be paying a server admin anyway I can hire a UNIX admin and you can buy UNIX servers without paying a Windows tax, but if I'm currently using Windows Server, it can be hard to justify switching. It's always hard to surplant an installed base. Open source will get there, but there is no panacia of cost savings or ease in the short term. I believe that those benefits will be there in the long term, but it can often be hard for companies to look past the end of their nose.

    • It was hard enough to train users to use a computer in the first place, let alone a new OS. It's not that big a problem for the tech savvy - I've been through more OSs than I care to remember. It does cost, not just in training, but in temporarily reduced productivity until they become familiar with the new system's look.

      One of the other things that will slow switching is the lack of, or slow, development of applications. I still keep in touch with one of my former industries, and as much as many peopl

    • Part of the problem is Linux users tend more to be trained and Windows users tend more to be habituated; it's much easier for a Linux users to jump on a windows box and be productive than vica versa. I find it interesting the amount of re-training a bussiness has to do with new versions of Windows/Office thinking it is cheaper then the same amount of train to convert employees to Linux.

      My son recently went to the Army's Linux training and asked me why Linux had so many options on the commands, I told him th
    • With OSS there's no clear strategy for apportioning blame elsewhere if things go PEAR-shaped (heh... PHP joke, sorry). You take responsibility for yourself, and those brave enough to do so are rewarded.

      But no-one rises through middle-management by bravery, they do so by political contrivance added to a certain required degree of competence, camoflauge and understanding.

      The current situation is that commercial solutions are poor for many, many applications (it still shocks me how bad many 'commercial' system
  • what motivates organizations to adopt open source software? According to Optaros, cost savings is one of the most significant factors.

    You mean people like open source software because it's free? Duh! I could have told them that without the survey.
    • You mean people like open source software because it's free? Duh! I could have told them that without the survey.

      Only in the US ;) RTFA: "Quality and flexibility (rather than cost savings) are driving open source adoption in Europe."
      • Yeah right, the Europeans like free stuff too. People like free stuff. These articles make it sound like there's something bad about liking free stuff. It's reality. Get used to it and get over it.
        • Not really. There is a difference between something free and something cheaper. Some will look at the licensing cost (Free) when others will look at the TCO (cheaper). The second point of view is IMHO much better both for the user and for FOSS. It implies a much higher participation in the movement. Sun is oscillating between the two points of view, depending on the product they 'sell'.
          • Well, yes TCO is important especially in a business setting. But, I was mainly talking about consumer products. Take Mozilla. People generally like Mozilla because it works well (probably even better than similar products) and is free. If it was not free, I seriously doubt a whole lot of people would use it, even if it was better than similar products. My point it that this is not a bad thing. People like free stuff. With regards to for profit entities, their strategy is different from the strategy of the M
  • the savings are more or less the same, therefore companies with less budget have a greater percentage in savings.

    In other words:

    People with less money have more reasons to go open source.

  • Savings? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bean123456789 ( 938830 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @06:51PM (#14522897)
    So if I did my super swell math correctly 3.3 Million to 1 Billon is .33%

    Not what I would call a great savings. That is just a drop in the bucket for these companies, they probably spend more on office supplies.

    • Re:Savings? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Hope Thelps ( 322083 )
      So if I did my super swell math correctly 3.3 Million to 1 Billon is .33%

      Lots of succesful companies have profit margins in the region of just a few percent of revenue. The ones that take your approach don't even have that. An saving equivalent to .33% of revenue can be a very significant increase to profit.
  • I'd like to see someone do a study regarding the TCO for small businesses. It seems like nowadays the focus is on large corporations, but we can't forget that "Mom & Pop stores" bring large amounts of revenue as well.
    • Its probably not worth it for small businesses to go with Linux. They don't have devlopers or dedicated admins and Dell doesn't support Linux. Another words, no personal to help with the switch or using the new software. Small businesses want quickbooks and office so they can play with the big boys.
  • Cost savings means MORE profit!!! That simple. A friend of mine has a mid sized company in Seattle and switched to OSS and the savings made his profit much larger (accounting looked great) and he then sold the company to a competitor for a huge gain.

    Come on, cost savings means the money goes to the owners (shareholders) pockets and not Microsoft, Apple or any other propreitary system.

    Also it saves paying the tech guys for stupid certs like the MCSE etc.... which mean nothing but more wages...It drives labor

  • From what I can tell as a sysadmin for the CS department at a University:

    1.) Better development platform.
    2.) ... Better development platform.

    We get all the windows stuff for free. We have a site license for everything in the entire MSDN Academic Alliance catalog. And we still roll more Linux than Windows.

    Programmers want Linux.*

    ~Will

    *And a few faculty members still want Digital/True64 4G for their Fortran compilers, since the GCC-Fortran kludge sucks and Lehey is expensive... but I digress...
    • *And a few faculty members still want Digital/True64 4G for their Fortran compilers, since the GCC-Fortran kludge sucks

      Is this gcc-fortran as in the new Fortran95 compiler? Or are you talking about g77? (If g77, I don't do enough Fortran to know, but the physics professor I've talked to who does a lot of Fortran really, really likes g77 ... is it really that bad that it can be called a kludge?)

      • It morphs fortran code into C in order to create the binary (or so this prof. said).

        • Well, that sure does sound like a kludge. Why doesn't the professor just use a real Fortran compiler like g77?

          • Again, from what he said, something about floating point accuracy. I don't know, honestly. He came to CS through Mathematics... and that's the same reason he doesn't want to give up his alpha - better floating point precision compared to intel or something.
        • ... morphs Ada code into C.

          Not the first time I hear this crap.

          Damm where does this FUD come from. All base gcc front ends - that is (in alphabetical order) Ada, C, C++, Fortran, Java and Objective-C are standart compiler systems - compiling directly into object code. No intermediate C at all.

          Martin
  • Making money is much more fun. Besides, how can you save money if you don't have any to save?
  • From the article: The survey also examines the barriers that impede open source adoption. Licensing concerns, software cost allocation policies, and software selection process difficulties are cited as the most frequent problems.

    In other words, FUD ("Licensing concerns") is actually having an effect in the US. Partially, it's because the larger the company (in the US), the more likely they will be hit with license violation lawsuits. (e.g. SCO aims for IBM)

    Partially, companies have licensing concerns be

  • OSS.

    This is due to Linux != OSS || Linux <> OSS, whichever you prefer.
  • It's about TIME I heard about a study that states the obvious: not having to pay for your software saves you money. I was getting really tired of all the MS sponsored studies showing that free software was in fact more expensive.
  • The cost of commercial software often is not the problem, this often would be negligible.

    But company bureaucracy forces you to write a project plan, rentability calculations, get permission of pointy haired bosses and so on.

    Why bother with that, if you can use free software?

    Sometimes my collegues and me do semi-private projects like setting up a department wiki. This would be impossible without free software and if we had to go through official ways.
  • If you think back to the outsourcing situation which started a few years ago, companies started moving offices/staff/call centers to other countries to save themselves money. This gave them the edge on the competition, who soon had to start making the same out sourcing decisions to stay competitive in the market. The more companies that move, the more pressure there is on all companies in that market to do the same thing.

    Open Source Software might be able to follow in similar footsteps - because it will st
  • Microsoft's Steve balmer threw linux at a chair, saying "that's our $3.3 million in revenues!"

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