Published by Jessica Weisman-Pitts
Posted on February 26, 2024
2024 State of Open Source Report Shows Open Source Software Adoption Growing Despite Security and Support Challenges
Global survey of over 2000 open source users finds challenges around security policies and end-of-life software persist and cost reduction was a leading driver for adoption in 2023.
Perforce Software, a provider of solutions to enterprise teams requiring productivity, visibility, and scale along the development lifecycle, recently unveiled the results of its annual open source survey — the 2024 State of Open Source Report. This year, OpenLogic by Perforce collaborated with the Eclipse Foundation in addition to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to conduct the survey and produce the report.
The 2024 State of Open Source Report sheds light on the factors driving open source software (OSS) adoption, the most in-demand open source technologies, and the difficulties that teams using OSS most frequently encounter. As in previous years, adhering to security and compliance policies, and keeping up to date with patches and releases, stood out as persistent issues: 79% of respondents said maintaining security policies and compliance is challenging (44% described it as “very challenging”); and staying current with updates and patches is a struggle for 70% of organizations, regardless of size.
“One of the goals of this report is to assist organizations with open source strategy and governance, including IT security policy-making,” said Javier Perez, Chief Open Source Evangelist at Perforce Software. “An interesting finding this year is that open source security tools are underutilized, probably due to lack of awareness, so we hope the report helps drive greater adoption of these technologies.” In the banking, insurance, and financial services vertical, the most commonly used open source security tools are Nmap (Network Mapper), OSWAP Dependency-Track, and the Versions Maven Plugin.
The 2024 State of Open Source Report also covers support and planning for end-of-life (EOL) or soon-to-be EOL software. The report shows that 22% of organizations are still using CentOS even though the last supported version (CentOS 7) will reach end-of-life on June 30, 2024. AngularJS, which became end-of-life at the end of 2021, is still being used by more than 20% of large enterprises, and almost 27% of banking, insurance, or financial services organizations. What’s more, 29% of those who are using AngularJS responded “I don’t know” when asked what they would do in the event of newly disclosed vulnerabilities. This aligns with the report’s finding that maintaining EOL versions is a significant issue for many organizations, possibly due to lack of skills and/or experience of personnel.
The report reveals that the top reason organizations are choosing OSS is to reduce costs. This marks a shift from previous years, where open source being freely available ranked behind reasons like having access to the latest technologies and improving development velocity.
“2023 has been called the ‘Year of Efficiency’ as many businesses took steps to operate more leanly. Switching to community open source software offered organizations a path to cut costs without sacrificing innovation,” said Rod Cope, Chief Technology Officer of Perforce Software.
According to the report, 95% of organizations increased or maintained their use of open source software in 2023, and 33% said their usage increased significantly. The most significant growth was reported among respondents in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
“It’s exciting to see open source software being more broadly embraced and adopted on a worldwide basis,” said Thabang Mashologu, VP, Marketing & Community Programs at the Eclipse Foundation. “The insights from this year’s State of Open Source Report are consistent with the growth we are seeing within our own communities, both in terms of project contributions and new members. We expect this positive trend to continue as more organizations recognize the technology and business advantages that come through active open source participation.”
Finally, the report indicates that databases and data technologies received the most investment in 2023, followed by cloud-native software and container orchestration technologies.
“The interest in data technologies goes hand in hand with the exponential growth happening right now in the AI/ML/DL space,” explains Stefano Maffulli, Executive Director of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). “AI/ML/DL models are trained on massive amounts of data, so it follows that investment in open source data technologies is surging. OSI is committed to helping drive the conversation around how to define open source AI.”
The survey, which was open from October 10 to November 8, 2023, received a total of 2,046 responses from individuals all over the world working with open source software in their organizations. Just over 30% were from UK and Europe and just under 30% from North America. Respondents from the banking, insurance, or financial services sector represented a little more than 12% of the survey population.
The 2024 State of Open Source Report is now available via this link: https://ter.li/14fyy2
A webinar, featuring Perforce Open Source Evangelist Javier Perez, OSI Executive Director Stefano Maffulli, and Eclipse Foundation Chief Membership Officer Gaël Blondelle, took place on February 21st. Interested parties can watch the webinar here: https://ter.li/md2j89. Learn more about how OpenLogic can help support and improve your integrated open source by visiting www.openlogic.com.
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