Gartner: 80% of software built on OSS by 2012
In a press release issued late last month analyst heavyweight Gartner made a series of technology predictions for the coming years.
By 2012, 80 percent of all commercial software will include elements of open source technology. Many open source technologies are mature, stable and well supported. They provide significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment. Ignoring this will put companies at a serious competitive disadvantage. Embedded open source strategies will become the minimal level of investment that most large software vendors will find necessary to maintain competitive advantages during the next five years.
What that means, as Matt Asay points out, is that proprietary software companies will have to stop pretending that they are the source of all innovation and admit to building on freely available open source software. In fact, the likelihood is that those that choose not to incorporate open source software will be left behind the development curve.
Many of the large IT software vendors already embed open source technology in their products - probably even Microsoft even though they don’t like to admit it - and in the coming years they’ll have to be a little more open about it.
[Via Open Road]
Proprietary software vendors using open source software is one thing. Whether they will actively develop the software and contribute back to the community is something that only time will tell.
