Open Source for Business

It's simply overwhelming, the level of adoption within businesses—large and small—of open source software... the OSI can help!

"75% of companies run open source" - 2015 Future of Open Source Survey                             70% of U.S. IT professionals prefer open source to proprietary software - 2014 Ponemon Institute Survey                             "The most forward companies are now looking to use open source to contribute and build business value." - Nithya Ruff, Sandisk
            "64% of companies say they participate in open source projects." - 2015 Future of Open Source Survey             "41% of Executives say the primary objective behind adoption of open source is to support development of new products and services." - 2015, Oxford Economics Survey                             "Enterprise IT departments will increasingly rely on open source products over proprietary products." - CIO Dive
"66% of companies consider open source before proprietary options." - 2015 Future of Open Source Survey                             "66% of IT practitioners agree, open source software means fewer bugs." - 2014 Ponemon Institute Survey                             63% of executives say open source software will be critical to agility over the next three years - - 2015, Oxford Economics Survey                             "Open source technologies are crucial to enabling transformation." - UK government CTO Liam Maxwell and Rob Harding, CIO at Capital One                             "Open source code has been proven to have fewer defects than proprietary software code. - Jay Ferro, CIO, American Cancer Society

The OSI helps businesses understand, adopt, contribute to and benefit from open source software, development practices and communities.

The open source model has a lot to offer the business world: both as consumers and contributors. While the most frequently cited benefit is lower total cost of ownership, many other benefits exist that enhance a businesses' return on any open source software investment.

Participating in open source projects and communities is a way to build open standards as actual software, rather than paper documents. It's a way for companies and individuals to collaborate around shared needs on a product that none of them could achieve alone or, in and of itself, does not constitute a key business differentiator. It's a better development model where bug-fixes and new features identified by your customers are done more quickly and with higher quality, yielding increased reliability..

The open source model also enables increased security; because code is in the public view it will be exposed to extreme scrutiny, with problems being found and fixed instead of being kept secret until the wrong person discovers them. And last but not least, it's a way that the little guys can get together, innovate and have a good chance at beating a monopoly.

Benefits of open source software

Innovation	Quality	Productivity	Strategic
Differentiation	Cleaner software	Don't reinvent the wheel Business acceleration Standardized practices Customize (if you want to)	Attract talent Motivate your workforce Standardized practices Comodity infrastructure Diferenciation Continuity Customer good will

Here's what the OSI is doing to promote awareness and adoption of open source software

• Support of Stack Exchange in development of licensing and distribution for code/content
• Development of open source licensing directory for integration with crowd-driven platforms ranging from Github to Kickstarter