In my open source talk I use data from a Forrester study that says that businesses are using open source for mission critical applications. This is why I found it interesting to read Matt Asay’s report that Forrester now says that virtually no one is using open source.

I generally like Forrester’s work, but this survey flies in the face of every piece of research on open source that I’ve seen in the last five years…including research from Forrester. Also, as the research itself finds, often its survey respondents are using open source even when they don’t know it: Nearly half of those surveyed by Forrester who are using open-source frameworks (e.g., Spring) still claim they are not using open source.

Forrester’s newest research finds:

• Seventy percent of decision-makers responded that they don’t have interest or have no plans to adopt open-source software;
• Only 23 percent of respondents said expanding their use of open-source software was a priority;
• Security is the main concern around adopting open-source software. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said it was an important or very important concern.

Matt goes on to provide some great stats on how open source is being used - and some of the data is even from Forrester.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 6:29 am by Nicole C. Engard and is filed under Open Source, Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.