The use of
open source software (OSS) is now pervasive with 85% of firms
using it, and the other 15% expecting to do so in the next 12
months, says analyst Gartner.
A Gartner survey of 274 companies around the world measured high
OSS usage, but found the majority (69%) failed to adequately
measure the cost of their OSS usage.
These had no formal policy for evaluating and cataloguing OSS
usage in their enterprise, opening up huge potential liabilities
for intellectual-property violations, said the analyst.
"Just because something is free does not mean that it has no
cost," said Laurie Wurster, a Gartner analyst. "Companies must have
a policy for procuring OSS, deciding which applications will be
supported by OSS, and identifying the intellectual property risk or
supportability risk associated with using OSS.
"Once a policy is in place, then there must be a governance
process to enforce it."
The Gartner survey results indicated that OSS in new projects is
being deployed nearly equally in mission-critical and
non-mission-critical situations.
Although the adoption rate is higher for more mature
infrastructure OSS projects and components, more projects related
to application software are in progress and are planned to start
within the next 12 months.