2 years ago

Category: Software

This article is sponsored by The Linux Foundation. The funding outlook for such programs also appears ready for an upswing: Fifty-one percent of respondents said an increase in financial support for open source initiatives at their organizations is very or somewhat likely to increase this fiscal year in light of macroeconomic conditions.

The share of organizations that regularly use or contribute to open source software, or engage in activities that help build the open source community, declined in 2021 compared to the previous year, Eighty-one percent of survey participants said their organizations frequently or sometimes use open source software for internal purposes, and 67% said they use it for commercial purposes; both of those figures were down compared to 2020, at 89% and 74%, respectively.

Maybe this is telling us that OSPOs [are] being considered a more critical asset even outside the ‘traditional tech sector, and now other industries are starting to learn about the value of open source, willing to invest and implement new initiatives to culture the relationships with the organization and the open-source ecosystem,” she said in an email interview.

Just under 69% of survey participants with open source programs said that fostering an open source culture is their program’s primary responsibility; in 2018, that figure was 75%.