• 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

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