Ten takeaways from the 2022 State of Open Source survey

We started 2022 with great news! Open Source is growing and the proof is in the numbers: Out of 2,660 respondents to our recent global survey, 77% increased the use of open source software in their organizations over the last 12 months, and 36.5% indicated that they increased the use significantly.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) and OpenLogic by Perforce joined forces to conduct a global survey about the State of Open Source software. In only six weeks, we drew 2,660 respondents from every corner of the globe and from companies of all sizes representing over 15 different industries.

We encourage you to read and share the entire 2022 State of Open Source Report, where we covered every major open source technology type. OSI members will receive the report in their inbox. For your convenience, here are 10 top takeaways:

  1. 77% of respondents increased the use of open source software in their organizations over the last 12 months, and 36.5% indicated that they increased the use significantly.
  2. 79% of respondents sponsor open source organizations.
  3. The #1 reason to use open source software is the access to innovation, thus passing cost reduction to a second place. Security and availability of patches also ranked high.
  4. The #1 barrier in adopting open source software is the lack of internal skills to test, use, integrate, and support.
  5. The #1 support challenge with open source software across all industries is personnel experience and proficiency.
  6. The highest overall increase in use went to open source DevOps tooling. Cloud-native CI/CD tools saw a significant increase in adoption.
  7. The most desirable new technologies are containers and Kubernetes. Only 18% of the respondents use Kubernetes today, 39% have a cloud strategy, and 29% have a containerization strategy.
  8. The highest among all organization sizes, 41% of small organizations have an open source strategy.
  9. The banking, insurance, and financial services industries have the highest number of Innersource projects.
  10. Only 13% of organizations have a legal team familiar with open source licensing.

Join us on February 24, 2022, for the 2022 State of Open Source Report: Key Findings and Analysis webinar where we are going to discuss results and anecdotes around popular open source software.

The future of open source software is bright! We invite you to read and enjoy the report, continue to enrich your open source acumen, and contribute back to open source projects and organizations like OSI.