UK lags in open source adoption

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The UK is lagging the US and the rest of Europe when it comes to taking up open source alternatives, according to a new survey.

Open source content management providers Alfresco today launched the results of their first ever barometer survey, which looks at data provided by 10,000 of its community members worldwide.

According to the data, the US is leading the charge toward open source, holding over a fifth of the market. But with less than five per cent of the market, the UK lags behind France, Spain, Germany and Italy. "The US buys it because it's better value," said Dr Ian Howells, Alfresco's chief marketing officer. "The EU is driven by government. The EU is trying to get value for its citizens."

The different growth rates in European nations suggest differing levels of public sector support, he said. "It reflects how governments want to sponsor and support open source in their organisations," said Howells. Governments are also increasingly favouring open source software and systems because it protects interoperability - meaning documents will still be readable in 20 years time.

In addition, he said open source is making good growth internationally. "Enterprise software starts in San Francisco goes to London, but eventually hits Paris and Frankfurt," said Howells. "But open source is global immediately."

The survey also found that Red Hat has been growing at twice the rate of Novell's Suse since the November 2006 patent agreement between Novell and Microsoft. "Within our community, Red Hat took off and Suse didn't," said Howells.

"This finding suggests that customers may not like the terms of the deal as more information became public," Howells added.

The survey also found that when users trialled Alfresco, they did so on Windows as much as Linux. But when it came to actually deploying it, Linux was the favourite at 52 per cent, while Windows trailed at 29 per cent. To Howells, this suggested that Windows is being used for testing and evaluation because it is the operating system on most users' desktops. "The difference is in how they evaluate things," said Howells. "People want an easy, simple way to evaluate something."

Another finding from the survey showed that in each programming area, there was a clear leader. Howells suggested this was because of the nature of open source programming, that once a company or format pulls ahead, people join up to it in a snowball effect. "More and more will join up onto the biggest communities," said Howells.

The barometer will continue to run biannually to track trends in the open source market.

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