Actuate Corporation has just announced results of its fourth annual open source survey conducted independently by Survey Interactive and UK enterprises are trailing behind yet again.
The results revealed that less than half of UK software firms, about 42 percent, are using open source tools and another 22 percent are still considering using it but haven’t yet made a decision.
This is no real change from last year and puts the UK behind other European countries such as Germany and France and well behind China. In fact the UK is tailing away at the back along with the US.
Around 60 percent of German companies are using open source tools, 67 percent of French firms and a massive 80 percent of Chinese companies whereas across the Atlantic only 41 percent of businesses in the USA are using open source software.
Why the reluctance?
It seems it’s all about perception of benefits. According to the researchers, the relatively low adoption of open source by UK companies was continued scepticism about the pros and cons of switching over to open source.
Take the perception in China as an example. “In all regions surveyed, the main perceived benefit of open source software is no licence costs” read the report.
“The proportion of UK respondents who feel that the benefits of open source software outweigh the inhibitors has decreased this year”
“Significantly, the UK continues to demonstrate a degree of reticence towards open source adoption, with almost a quarter still monitoring developments but not yet evaluating.”
Germany has a more positive attitude towards open source than the UK as 62% of respondents there said they were in favour of open source, which is an increase on last year’s numbers.
The survey is considered a global benchmark for usage and attitudes towards Open Source software and this is the first time that China was included.
“China is a huge and very influential market for business and IT trends. Its inclusion in the 2009 Actuate Open Source Survey is a true mark of Actuate’s leadership and innovation in their field” said Guy Lipscombe, Managing Director of Survey Interactive.
Interestingly, aside from no licence costs, 72.6 percent of Chinese respondents also cited ‘access to the source code’ as a benefit which was the highest of all the countries surveyed. On the other hand only 35.2 percent of UK respondents agreed with that.
What do you think?
If you want to find out all the latest news on tech why not subscribe to our RSS feed?
Leave a Reply