Must haves: an open source strategy and policy

Posted by Stormy on October 24th, 2008 in Open Source

Every company should have an open source strategy and policy – or at least cover open source in their company's policy. Even if they don't use open source software, they should have a policy saying whether or not they could use open source or who would have to decide. Otherwise they'll end up wasting developer time.

And yet survey after survey shows that companies do not have open source software policies. Mark Radcliffe reports that the DLA Piper 2008 Technology Leaders Forecast Survey found that only 48% of companies* have an open source software strategy and:

Larger companies, those with more than 5,000 employees, reported use of open source software in only 9% of their products and 65% do not have open source use policies.

I bet even fewer would have an open source strategy. (My argument for a strategy, which I will repeat endlessly, is that if you don't state why you are using open source, you won't set up the right policies.)

* Disclaimer: the study wasn't included and I wasn't sure what "these companies" referred to.

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  1. Jack Repenning said, on October 24th, 2008 at 11:32 am

    Once again, “reported use … in only 9%” seems in great doubt in view of the OSSCensus.org results.

  2. Stormy said, on October 24th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    Agreed. But the number says used in their products. I’d bet 99% of companies use open source software – but I don’t have a good feel for how many use it in their products. (As opposed to their IT environments.)

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