This from Actuate’s recent open source survey:

• China reveals high adoption rates with a large majority of those surveyed (80.3%) using open source software. In all regions surveyed the main perceived benefit of open source software is no licence costs. However access to source code was uniquely given a 72.6% rating by Chinese respondents.
• In North America two-fifths of respondents are already using open source (41.0%) with close to one-tenth of respondents either in the process of adopting or planning to adopt.  The proportion of respondents who feel that the benefits of open source software outweigh the inhibitors (56.8%) is nearly seven times higher than the proportion that disagree (8.4%). These results are even more positive than in the previous survey. 
• Europe continues to capitalise on its early recognition of open source software’s potential, in particular France where over two thirds (67.0%) of the respondents already use open source software and Germany where the proportion using open source software has increased this year to 60.6%.  This contrasts with the UK at 42.1% adoption and the USA at 41.0%
• Germany’s attitudes to open source adoption continue to be more positive than neighbouring UK.  For example the proportion of UK respondents who feel that the benefits of open source software outweigh the inhibitors has decreased this year to 47.0% (from 54.0% in 2008) whereas Germany scores 62.0% in favour of open source, a notable increase since last year’s survey.
• The UK shows little change since last year with just over two fifths (42.1%) already using open source software.  Significantly the UK continues to demonstrate a degree of reticence towards open source adoption with almost a quarter (22.4%) still monitoring developments but not yet evaluating. 

In short - open source is everywhere

I am working on some very very broad research on open source use in libraries for a book I’m working on. The focus of the book will be on software you can use that is open source. If you have a chance to answer this brief survey to help me out that would be greatly appreciated:

http://opensource.web2learning.net/limesurvey/index.php?sid=63946&lang=en

In sticking with the open source theme, I used LimeSurvey (an open source survey management tool) - check it out!!

Feel free to link here or repost this announcement all over libraryland.

If your library is using Drupal or Joomla you might want to help another librarian by answering these 5 questions about why you chose the system you chose.

I was going to answer the survey, but it assumes that I’m talking about my experience in a library - and I never used either in a library, but have used both. My preference (if I can only pick between those two) is Joomla - but neither is really perfect.

Technorati Tags: joomla, drupal

A new survey from Actuate has been released.

The 2008 Actuate Annual Open Source Survey, conducted in June this year, (see press release titled ‘Third Annual Actuate Open Source Software Survey Underway and Already Surpassing Last Year’s Response Rate‘, June 30, 2008) found that there is widespread adoption of open source software across regions. Europe in particular is forging ahead, having recognized early on the lower cost of ownership and the flexibility open source software offers for future application expansion and development. Exploring in depth organisations’ use of and attitudes towards open source, across four important territories, the findings confirm that open source software is not a “here today, gone tomorrow” phenomenon, rather it has been broadly recognized and embraced for its ability to offer organizations sustained competitive advantage (see press release titled ‘Open Source Enters the Mainstream According to Findings from the Actuate Annual Open Source Survey for 2008‘, September 29, 2008).

This from an email I got with the new report:

The survey, sampling more than 550 senior personnel at companies across the U.S. and Canada – more than half of them in the troubled financial services sector – shows that nearly two-thirds (60%) see cost-effectiveness (specifically, the no cost license) as a major benefit to open source adoption. Of specific interest to Actuate’s future prospects, the results also show that more than three-quarters (77.4%) of North American respondents consider Business Intelligence (BI) and reporting tools important or very important to their company.

You can read the report for yourself for free on Actuate’s website.

Based on information from a recent Gartner report, 85 percent of companies are already using open source and 15% more plan on using it soon!!

According to a 274 companies polled in various industries in North America, Europe, and the Asia/Pacific region - including a cross section of small, midrange, and large enterprises - some 85 per cent of the companies have adopted open source software within their system, middleware, or application software stacks. And from back at the cusp of spring and summer, the remaining 15 per cent polled said that they were planning to deploy open source software within the next 12 months.

Learn more from The Register and ZDNet.

We get a lot of survey requests via the open source lists I subscribe to and I like to share them with you all so that you too can participate. Here’s the latest:

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Instructional Technology at the University of Tennessee. For my dissertation, I am studying why people contribute to Free Open Source Software (F/OSS). I want to know what motivates you to join and contribute to F/OSS. The survey should take no more than 15 minutes and asks for no identifying information.

Please click on the following link to take the survey. If you are interested in the results of the survey, please send me a message.

http://ubiquity.utk.edu/limesurvey/index.php?sid=45871&lang=en

Your help is highly appreciated.
Thanks,
Hoda Baytiyeh.
hodabn@utk.edu

If you have some time, take this survey on Open Source Satisfaction in Libraries:

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Information Management at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, and my research topic is an investigation of factors that influence participant satisfaction with library or information management free/open source software projects. Some library-related examples are DSpace, EPrints, Koha, Evergreen, Greenstone, and MyLibrary. More general information management software includes web content management software such as Drupal, wiki software such as MediaWiki or PmWiki, or blogging software such as WordPress.

If you use or are involved with a relevant project, I would like to invite you to complete an online survey. I am especially interested in hearing from people in a range of roles, for example user, developer, release manager, or system administrator. I am keen to have responses from people who have had either positive or negative experiences with free/open source software, to ensure that I get a perspective on factors that diminish satisfaction, as well as those that contribute toward it.

The results of this project will help developers of free/open source application software projects identify opportunities to increase user satisfaction, and it will also help users identify ways in which they might contribute to projects.

I expect the survey to take between 15 and 20 minutes of your time. You may receive several copies of this message, since I am sending it to a number of project and library technology email discussion lists; however, I ask that you only complete the survey once. If you have colleagues who you think would be interested in completing it, please forward this invitation to them.

The survey is available at:

http://surveys.sim.vuw.ac.nz/survey.aspx?surveyid=205

It will be available until Friday, 14 November 2008.

I will post a summary of the results to relevant project and library technology email discussion lists, once the thesis is finished in mid-2009. A copy of the thesis will be deposited in the Victoria University of Wellington Institutional Repository (http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/).

If you have any questions about this survey, please contact me at brenda.chawner@vuw.ac.nz or phone +64 4 463 5780. My supervisors are Professor Gary Gorman, email gary.gorman@vuw.ac.nz and Professor Sid Huff, email sid.huff@vuw.ac.nz.

The results of a survey from last year have been published online.

This survey was conducted from October 30, 2007 to January 3, 2008. It was answered by libraries using the open source ILSs Koha (n=113) and Evergreen (n=119), and proprietary ILSs (n=129). The current version of Koha was 2.2.9 and Evergreen was 1.2.

There are a lot of results to read through, I have only skimmed it so far, but I wanted to share it with you all so that you too could read it.

If you have a moment, please participate in this survey by Outsell regarding the use of open source software in libraries:

Outsell, Inc. (www.outsellinc.com) is conducting research on the use of open source software in libraries and information management functions. In particular, we are exploring the use or consideration of open source software in integrated library systems (ILS).

Open source software programs are created collaboratively. Users and developers are free to share and change open source programs. Open source software differs from proprietary software which does not allow its source code to be copied or customized by unauthorized users.

Examples of ILSs which are created with open source code are Koha or Evergreen. Examples of ILSs designed with proprietary software are those offered by SirsiDynix, Ex Libris, Inmagic, etc.

We appreciate your participation in this short survey. All participants will receive a summary of the research results. All responses are confidential.

Please note: the survey will close on August 26th at midnight Pacific Time.

You can find the survey here.