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The State of Open Source Software in 2023

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source link: https://devm.io/open-source/open-source-state-2023
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OSS challenges and benefits

The State of Open Source Software in 2023

Javier Perez

07. Mar 2023

The results of the latest annual State of Open Source Software survey – a collaboration between OpenLogic by Perforce and the Open Source Initiative (OSI) – shed light on the latest trends, usage and challenges surrounding open source software (OSS). Based on a global survey of over 800 open-source business users worldwide, the results found that 80 per cent of respondents report having increased usage of OSS in the 12 months leading up to January 2023.

Furthermore, organisations use open source software for a range of business-critical applications. The top three categories for investment in open source technologies include data technologies, containers and container orchestration, and SDLC tools (around a third of all respondents for all three), closely followed by operating systems at just over 30%.

The number one reason for using open source software is to have access to innovations and the latest technologies (almost 38%), closely followed by functionality (to improve development velocity), and stable technology with community long-term support (just under 37%). Next up was the ability to contribute to — and influence the direction of — open source projects, together with the fast-moving, constant enhancements, releases and patches found in the OSS world, both coming in at 32% each.

Regional variations

However, there were some regional variations: in the UK, an advanced and mature OSS market, the top reasons cited to choose OSS were contributing to and influencing the direction of open source projects, as well as access to stable technology (around a third of each respectively). In Europe, respondents ranked having no licence costs and overall cost reduction as the biggest reason for choosing open source (41%), followed by avoiding vendor-lock-in (37%). These results aside, worldwide cost-saving benefits do not even appear in the top 8 reasons to choose OSS, reflecting the realisation that there are more compelling reasons for choosing OSS.

There are also some encouraging signs around giving back to the broader OSS community, with 37% globally contributing to OSS projects and organisations. In addition, 28% have legal teams familiar with open-source licensing, and 35% have OSS security and compliance policies in place, with almost half performing security scans to identify vulnerabilities in OSS packages. However, the survey’s respondents mention maintaining security policies or compliance as their biggest challenge, according to just over 40%. Over a third also included keeping up with software patches in their top three challenges supporting OSS.

Other challenges

The lack of skills, experience, and proficiency is an issue for almost 37%, underlying what is already widely known: OSS talent and know-how continue to be in short supply. Similarly, lack of access to low-level technical support and no real-time technical support are issues for approximately a third of all respondents. Digging deeper into the survey results, lack of skills and experience featured either top of or high on the list in multiple sub-categories: infrastructure, cloud-native, programming languages, runtimes, frameworks, SDLC, CI/CD, build, automation, configuration and data technologies.

Around 30% of the survey’s respondents quoted installation, upgrades and configuration as a support challenge, potentially exposing their organisations to risk. In the case of end of life (EOL) OSS, 15% are still using AngularJS (rising to 20% in larger organisations), which reached the EOL on December 31, 2021. Using EOL software can contribute towards the unpatched software vulnerabilities, in turn opening the door for cyber attacks. Of course, EOL usage is associated with a lack of internal resources, which is why organisations are also turning to third-party providers for their OSS upgrades and maintenance.

Maturity

Vulnerabilities aside, there are more indications that the adoption of OSS is maturing, becoming a fundamental way organisations operate today. For example, innersource projects, open source programme offices (OSPOs), experts for different OSS technologies, OSS software bills of materials (SBOMs), and developing software in public git repos were all mentioned.

The survey also covered future trends. In 2022, Kubernetes or Kubernetes Operators received the highest votes for the most desirable future technologies, but this year, they have been marginally edged out by artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL). The probable reason for this is that organisations are increasing the use of container or cloud-native technologies and the next big thing is the use of AI/ML/DL technologies in their software.

All these results underline the inescapable fact that OSS is mainstream is all software development and key components of how businesses operate. Clearly, some significant issues remain, but there is also the realisation that these must — and can — be overcome. If that goal can be achieved, then OSS benefits have a chance to outshine its challenges.

Read the 2023 State of Open Source Report.

Javier Perez
Javier Perez

Passionate about technology and open-source software, Javier is Chief Evangelist of OSS and API Management for Perforce Software. He is responsible for technical thought leadership and advocacy for the open-source and API management portfolios. Javier has been in the application development, open-source, cloud, app security, AI, SaaS, and mobile industries for 20+ years. He has had the opportunity to speak at industry events all over the world and holds an honors degree in Computer Systems and an MBA.


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