Actuate’s comprehensive international annual market study, conducted independently by Survey Interactive, is now in its fourth year. This continuity ensures its role as an unrivalled industry benchmark of organisations’ use of open source software, and charts the accelerating and developing pace of adoption across markets and industry sectors.

Closely examining organizations’ developing attitudes towards open source, this year’s research adds an additional dimension to the findings, including China for the first time, in addition to the key territories previously polled – France, Germany, the UK and North America.

China is a vast open source market and its inclusion in the 2009 Actuate Open Source Survey gives increased insight into its adoption rates and attitudes, which contrast with the take-up and opinion in other major regions. By reducing the cost of technology ownership, open source in China seems to be the ideal antidote to the recession, while providing a solution for information safety, a means of breaking the monopoly in the software industry and a boost to China’s own innovation.

As in previous years, business and IT professionals from the financial services sector, public sector and the manufacturing industry were invited to take part in an online survey to provide insights and perspectives into how open source software is perceived; its benefits and inhibitors; and how their organisations plan to harness the technology in the future.

Highlights of the 2009 Actuate Open Source Survey include:

• China reveals high adoption rates with a large majority of those surveyed (80.3%) using open source software. In all regions surveyed the main perceived benefit of open source software is no licence costs. However access to source code was uniquely given a 72.6% rating by Chinese respondents.
• In North America two-fifths of respondents are already using open source (41.0%) with close to one-tenth of respondents either in the process of adopting or planning to adopt. The proportion of respondents who feel that the benefits of open source software outweigh the inhibitors (56.8%) is nearly seven times higher than the proportion that disagree (8.4%). These results are even more positive than in the previous survey.
• Europe continues to capitalise on its early recognition of open source software’s potential, in particular France where over two-thirds(67.0%) of the respondents already use open source software and Germany where the proportion using open source software has increased this year to 60.6%. This contrasts with the UK at 42.1% adoption and the USA at 41.0%.
• Germany’s attitudes to open source adoption continue to be more positive than neighbouring UK. For example the proportion of UK respondents who feel that the benefits of open source software outweigh the inhibitors has decreased this year to 47.0% (from 54.0% in 2008) whereas Germany scores 62.0% in favour of open source, a notable increase from 62.0% since last year’s survey.
• The UK shows little change since last year with just over two-fifths (42.1%) already using open source software. Significantly the UK continues to demonstrate a degree of reticence towards open source adoption with almost a quarter (22.4%) still monitoring developments but not yet evaluating.

"China is a huge and very influential market for business and IT trends. Its inclusion in the 2009 Actuate Open Source Survey is a true mark of Actuate’s leadership and innovation in their field. This was a first Chinese survey for Survey Interactive, and we are delighted with the very positive response rate that was generated," said Guy Lipscombe, Managing Director of Survey Interactive. "The survey is now in its fourth year and is growing year on year, further validating its position as a global benchmark for usage and attitudes towards Open Source software."

Country specific reports detailing the findings of Actuate’s 2009 Annual Open Source Survey will be available shortly. In the interim, further detail and past survey reports can be found by contacting Ben Hohmann at bhohmann@actuate.com.

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