In Germany, one in every three large companies is involved in developing open source software, according to a survey published by Bitkom, a German IT and telecommunications industry association. About half of these firms let staff participate in open source projects, and almost 40% of them are paying members or sponsors of open source organisations.
One in every four companies is working with open source communities on its own projects, and 15% contribute code to open source projects, according to the Bitkom survey, published this Tuesday.
Half of all the companies surveyed have one or more employees formally or informally responsible for open source.
The survey is based on telephone interviews with 804 companies with at least 100 employees. The advantages of open source include lower costs, increased security, IT vendor independence, increased choice, and access to the source code, Bitkom reports.
Innovate at lower costs
“The biggest disadvantage is the lack of skilled workers: experts in the company who are able to, for example, tailor software or develop it further,” the trade association explains. The companies surveyed also complained about a lack of training courses and the need to train staff.
In his introduction to the study, Bitkom president Achim Berg writes that open source is one of the factors shaping Germany’s digitalisation, for three reasons. First, open source is part of every IT system, and a base for commercial software. Second, open source makes it much easier to innovate, and at lower costs. And third, open source’s essential values are cooperation, working together and sharing.
“It is no coincidence that the GAIA-X project for a European cloud and data infrastructure, recently presented at the Digital Summit, lists open API, open standards, open documentation and open source as basic principles for its success,” Mr Berg writes.
The BitKom report was welcomed by the OSB Alliance, Germany’s open source industry associations. OSBA chairman Peter Ganten told the Commission’s Open Source Observatory: “The report sends another clear signal to public services that, to speed up digitisation and innovation, they need to strategically leverage open source software. Fortunately, it looks like this message has been heard ny some public services.”