[Fsf-friends] Report on Economic impact of FOSS

V. Sasi Kumar sasi.fsf@[EMAIL-PROTECTED]
Mon Jan 15 10:22:16 IST 2007


• FLOSS applications are first, second or third-rung products in terms
of market share in several markets, including web servers, server
operating systems, desktop operating systems, web browsers, databases,
e-mail and other ICT infrastructure systems. FLOSS market share higher
in Europe than in the US for operating systems and PCs, followed by
Asia. These market shares have seen considerable growth in the past five
years.
• FLOSS market penetration is also high – a large share of private and
public organisations report some use of FLOSS in most application
domains. In the public sector, Europe has particularly high penetration,
perhaps soon to be overtaken by Asia and Latin America. In the private
sector, FLOSS adoption is driven by medium- and large-sized firms.
• Almost two-thirds of FLOSS software is still written by individuals;
firms contribute about 15% and other institutions another 20%.
• Europe is the leading region in terms of globally collaborating FLOSS
software developers, and leads in terms of global project leaders,
followed closely by North America (interestingly, more in the East Coast
than the West). Asia and Latin America face disadvantages at least
partly due to language barriers, but may have an increasing share of
developers active in local communities.
• Weighted by regional PC penetration, central Europe and Scandinavia
provide disproportionately high numbers of developers; weighted by
average income, India is the leading provider of FLOSS developers by
far, followed by China.
• While the U.S. has the edge in terms of large FLOSS-related
businesses, the greater individual contribution from Europe has led to
an increasing number of globally successful European FLOSS small- and
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

These are from the report on "Economic impact of FLOSS on innovation and
competitiveness of the EU ICT sector". See
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/doc/2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf

Best
-- 
V. Sasi Kumar
Atmospheric Sciences Division
Centre for Earth Science Studies
PB No. 7250, Thuruvikkal PO
Thiruvananthapuram 695031, India
-- 
V. Sasi Kumar <sasi.fsf at gmail.com>
Free Software Foundation of India




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