http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/01/huge_new_study_.html

Wednesday, 17 January 2007 Huge New Study On Free/Open Software Topic: software

There's an interesting, albeit rather long, new study available from an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers that documents Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) and its economic influences on the EU.

The full text of the 287 page report, entitled "Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU," is available online (PDF). The report provides the most thorough and comprehensive look at the contributions of the FLOSS community that I've ever seen.

While most of the statics and numbers are geared toward the EU and European nations in general (the lead contractor of the study was UNU-MERIT from the Netherlands), the study nevertheless provides a fascinating look at free software and its impact on the world at large.

Particularly stunning is the estimated time to reproduce this software in proprietary format (131,000 person years) and the estimated amount of donated programming effort in monetary terms (800 million Euros per year).

Here's some more highlights pulled straight from the text (emphasis mine):

* 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.

* The existing base of quality FLOSS applications with reasonable quality control and distribution would cost firms almost Euro 12 billion to reproduce internally. This code base has been doubling every 18-24 months over the past eight years, and this growth is projected to continue for several more years.

* This existing base of FLOSS software represents a lower bound of about 131 000 real person-years of effort that has been devoted exclusively by programmers. As this is mostly by individuals not directly paid for development, it represents a significant gap in national accounts of productivity. Annualised and adjusted for growth this represents at least Euro 800 million in voluntary contribution from programmers alone each year, of which nearly half are based in Europe.

* Firms have invested an estimated Euro 1.2 billion in developing FLOSS software that is made freely available. Such firms represent in total at least 565 000 jobs and Euro 263 billion in annual revenue. Contributing firms are from several non-IT (but often ICT intensive) sectors, and tend to have much higher revenues than non-contributing firms.

* Defined broadly, FLOSS-related services could reach a 32% share of all IT services by 2010, and the FLOSS-related share of the economy could reach 4% of European GDP by 2010.

* Proprietary packaged software firms account for well below 10% of employment of software developers in the U.S., and "IT user" firm -- FN M: 0091 9822122436 P: +91-832-240-9490 (after 1300IST please) http://fn.goa-india.org http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com