Policies for Open Source Software Use
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I read an interesting report from Gartner this morning that says 85% of 274 end-user organizations surveyed are currently using Open Source Software (OSS) in their enterprises today, and the remaining 15% expect to in the next 12 months. I was very surprised by this high percentage. I was even more surprised when I realized this study was done in May and June of 2008.
Companies in the survey were from various countries and markets in Asia/Pacific, Europe and North America. Respondents were evenly distributed across manufacturing, education, financial services and services companies and included a cross section of small, medium and large organizations. They also excluded software vendors (sorry Teamstudio) and external service providers (ESPs).
Now for the shocker: 69% of these companies surveyed said that they have no formal policy for evaluating and cataloguing OSS usage in their enterprise. 69%! What kind of exposure do you think they have with intellectual-property violations alone? What kind of risks are they taking by adopting software without a support commitment from IT?
Given that one of the top reasons given for using OSS was the lower cost of ownership (TCO), I have to wonder what would happen to the TCO if they were sued for intellectual-property violations? The respondents did acknowledge that governance, or lack of it, was the number 1 challenge for them. This sounds like an area Teamstudio needs to address in the next round of Policy Guide edits.
You can see the full report here. But I warn you, it’s not cheap!
Scott