A recent IDC report mentioned that 2007 revenue for stand-alone FOSS was $1.7 billion, and that it was projected to reach $4.8 billion by 2012.

After being announced back in december, the Open Source Census has now officially launched. A software, under an open source license, is available to scan a computer and send back the data to a central database that will be used to report hard facts about the use of Free and Open Source software.

This initiatice, by OpenLogic, has the support of several companies and organisations.

A poll on Ajaxian.com had response showing that the overwelming majority of respondents were using Open Source ajax libraries. The most popular libraties are Prototype,JQuery and Extjs. The only proprietary solution with significant response was Backbase.

Extjs' rise in popularity is impressive, as is Jquery's. Also of note is the quasi-disappearance from the responses of popular early players as xajax and Rico.

Though this poll is no scientific truth or statistically representative (open source enthousiats are more likely to visit Ajaxian than some corporate developer coding only for the money), with more than 2000 respondents it still give an idea of some trends.

An Open Source Census initiative has been announced, with the aim to quatify the spread of Free and Open Source software in the enterprise. It'll start in Q1 2008, but you can become a sponsor or help improve the OSS Discovery software, released under the GNU Affero GPL.

If this initiative gets enough support, it could bring very interesting data. A good reason to take a close look!

The Agence Wallone des Télécommunications (Walloon Agency for Telecommunications), a partner of Profoss, has published a study about the use of ICT in the walloon municipalities. It appears that the best known environment is Linux, mastered by 23%, before dotNet (17%). More than 1 out of 4 munipalities use an open source project as their server application, and of those only 12% have no dedicated computer personel.

Software about which the municipalities are the least happy are those managing works, cemeteries, urbanism and the police. Time to develop an free and opens source solution for those tasks?

Also seen on Toolinux

If you're a company developing software, you might be tempted to put some of your software under a free or open source license. Putting code under an open source license isn't a solution in itself though, there's a lot more to do: building a community of developers for example. There's no magic recipe to apply, but there's a lot to learn by looking at Xara's failed attempt as described by Linux.com and commented by Matt Asay.

Xara put their vector drawing tool under an open source license, except for the central piece of the tool: the CDraw rendering library. Refusing to listen to the objections of the emerging community, the project failed to get the needed developers attention. The lessons? If you want to go free and open source, go for it wholeheartedly, and be ready to collaborate with the community. If you're not ready for that, it might be wiser to wait a bit.

The Observatoire du Logiciel Libre published its latest report on the Free and Open Source software market in the enterprise, based on training organised for professionals. Although the conclusions cannot be considered as definitive because based on only one company providing trainings, the data unveiled can be used as one indicator of what is currently going on in the market.

The report is in french, but here are the trends comparing the first half of 2007 with the same period in 2006:

• The number of people trained rose 20%. The LAMP stack is still very popular, but the growth of Linux training slowed (+1% only), and the report attributed this to the arrival of Windows Server 2003.
• the trainings delivered become broader, becoming less technical, with for example trainings for SugarCRM and Jaspersoft's reporting solutions.
• Mysql, part of the LAMP stack, keeps growing with 40% more people trained
• Java is still popular, with a progression 66% more people trained
• Postgresql trainings number is stable. Postgresql seems to be used in more established companies and by specialists, relying on its most advanced features like PostGIS.
• the number of trainings delivered about OpenOffice stumbled by 80%. The report mentions that a lot of companies a getting OpenOffice directly, without trainings.

The last point would be worth further investigation: are companies really interestedin OpenOffice without trainings? Or do they have internal experts who deliver training inside the company?

Source: Toolinux

Marsouin has published their report on ""Industrial strategy of FLOSS companies". This report is written in french, but here are some interesting points for the less fluent in french.