Open source grows exponentially
Open source grows exponentially, and doubles every 14 months. This at least is the finding by someone who looked at the total amount of open source software out there, counted the projects and total lines of code.
Here is an utterly impressive graph from the study, which shows that the speed at which new projects are added also grows exponentially:
And here then the total number of open source projects (mind you, this only counts active projects):
The graph for the overall lines of code looks very similar (exponential growth), so I haven't included it here.
Of course it will not be able to keep the exponential growth forever, but it is interesting to imagine this growth for a little while longer, and then therefore a world in which the majority of all code is open! That little fantasy aside, the exponential growth we see right now is a pretty strong indicator that there is tremendous uptake of open source across the board.
It would be interesting to see which percentage of the code is contributed by companies vs. private individuals. Nevertheless, if this trend continues then eventually open source will become the norm, rather than the exception. This is also echoed by Gartnerwhen they say:
In a few years' time, almost all businesses will use open source... 98 to 99 percent of SaaS will be open source...I think they mean to say: 98 to 99 percent of SaaS offerings will be using open source software.
But still, it looks like open source is something you can only ignore at your own peril.
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