Aim of this page

This page is intended to gather a maximum of links to studies, press articles about figures of the Free Software economic side. Namely :

How much money is business around Free Software generating?
Which percentage of organisations uses Free Software?
Does Free Software use in the public sector really generate economic activities in the region in question?
How many Free Software companies are there ?

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Reported Studies

Netcraft yearly web server survey : August 2010 : Apache 56,06% ; Microsoft 25,03%

“By 2012 more than 90% of enterprises will use open source in direct or embedded form” (Gartner)
“Proprietary vendors lose $60 billion to Open Source” (Standish Group)
“11% of all new commercial software requirements are satisfied by open source” (Standish Group)

April 2007 Livres blancs sur les modèles économiques du logiciel libre
- In 2006, the French Free Software market represents about 500m €, and 1.4% of the informatic services in France. In 2010, it should be 5000m€ and 5& of the market. (p 20.)
“The Impact of Free/Libre/Open Source Software on Innovation and Competitiveness of the European Union – UN University MERIT on behalf of the European Commission” 2007
- Some 50% of organisations already are using OSS in some way
- Firms have already invested €1.2 billion in developing FLOSS software.
- Could reach 35% market share of all IT services by 2010.......and 5% of European GDP
- Potentially saves industry over 36% in software R+D
Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers! - April 16, 2007 Also available in short in a PDF presentation. Very circumstancial study, however based on numbers from 1999 to 2005, quite old
- "FLOSS dominates web serving."
  - November 2005: Apache 70.98%, IIS 20.24% [Netcraft survey of 74,572,794 sites]
  - Active Sites: Apache 69.36%, IIS 24.31% [Netcraft]
- GNU/Linux #2 server OS sold 99, 00, 01 (24%, 27%, 25%)
  - Fuzz studies found FLOSS applications significantly more reliable [U Wisconsin]
- GNU/Linux #2 web serving OS in the 2000's
  - Windows : 49.6% ; GNU/Linux : 29.6% ; 2.4% MacOS, NetWare, proprietary IBM OSes

Information week : Open source use : 67% of companies use OSS/FS products, with another 16% expecting to use it in 2005; only 17% have no near-term plans to support OSS/FS products