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Those Heady Days of Sex, Drugs & Linux Are Over

FOSS is Now Costing Software Vendors $60 Billion a Year in Annual Revenues, and It's Still Only 6% of the Global Spend
By Maureen O'Gara
Article Rating:
April 30, 2008 04:45 PM EDT
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 15,576

Well, it looks like Richard Stallman, the father of FOSS, is going to have to cut his hair and get a suit because the warmed-over hippie movement he’s been leading is no longer the radical anti-software establishment counter-culture his rag-tag army fancies it is.

Nope, it IS the software establishment.

That is the finding of the Standish Group, which after five years of research on open source has delivered a $1,000 report called “Trends in Open Source,” a study that finds that FOSS is now costing software vendors $60 billion a year in annual revenues, and it’s still only 6% of the global spend.

Standish also says that if open source product and service were calculated at commercial prices, the open source initiative would be the largest software company in the world, outselling Microsoft, Oracle and Computer Associates combined.

And if all its annual hours were added up and divided by the average workweek, the open source community would equate to the largest software employer in the world.

Standish says the open source phenomenon has reached the “fashion” stage, meaning the market has reached maturity and general acceptance, After that comes commoditization.

Published April 30, 2008 – Reads 15,576
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Maureen O'Gara

Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.

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Most Recent Comments
jonson 04/26/08 04:34:08 PM EDT

So it means that FOSS is now saving software users $60 billion a year in ICT costs
Drummer 04/21/08 03:58:09 PM EDT

"Those Heady Days of Sex, Drugs & Linux Are Over"

That's "Hedley". (with thanks to Mel Brooks).
tracyanne 04/20/08 08:16:07 PM EDT

quote>> Nope, it IS the software establishment. << quote

That is exactly what we have been working all these years to achieve.
Dean 04/20/08 07:52:43 PM EDT

I'm sure Stallman would disagree with you. First, he objects to use of the term "open source" and he won't speak to you unless you call Linux by the name "GNU Linux". The hippie roots of free software and GNU-Linux are still firmly planted where they've always been (see the GPL). Corporations have taken the plants which have grown from these roots and decided to prune them so as to better fit into their business plans and make them money.