2024 State of Open Source report by Perforce

This year, OpenLogic by Perforce collaborated with the Eclipse Foundation in addition to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to conduct the survey and produce the report.  

The 2024 State of Open Source Report sheds light on the factors driving open source software (OSS) adoption, the most in-demand open source technologies, and the difficulties that teams using OSS most frequently encounter. As in previous years, adhering to security and compliance policies, and keeping up to date with patches and releases, stood out as persistent support challenges: 79% of respondents said maintaining security policies and compliance is challenging (44% described it as “very challenging”); and staying current with updates and patches is also considered challenging for 70% of organisations, regardless of size. 

“One of the goals of this report is to assist organisations with open source strategy and governance, including IT security policy-making,” said Javier Perez, Chief Open Source Evangelist at Perforce Software. “An interesting finding this year is that open source security tools are underutilised, probably due to lack of awareness, so we hope the report helps drive greater adoption of these technologies.”

The 2024 State of Open Source Report also covers support and planning for end-of-life (EOL) or soon-to-be EOL software. The report shows that 22% of organisations are still using CentOS, the last supported version of which will reach end-of-life on June 30, 2024. AngularJS, which became end-of-life at the end of 2021, is still being used by more than 20% of large enterprises, which is the same percentage as in 2022. What’s more, 29% of organisations who are using AngularJS responded “I don’t know” when asked what they would do in the event of newly disclosed vulnerabilities. This aligns with the report’s finding that maintaining EOL versions is a significant issue for many organisations, possibly due to lack of skills and/or experience of personnel.

The report reveals that the top reason organisations are choosing OSS is to reduce costs. This marks a shift from previous years, where open source being freely available ranked behind reasons like having access to the latest technologies and improving development velocity.

“2023 has been called the ‘Year of Efficiency’ as many businesses took steps to operate more leanly. Switching to community open source software offered organisations a path to cut costs without sacrificing innovation,” said Rod Cope, Chief Technology Officer of Perforce Software.

According to the report, 95% of organisations increased or maintained their use of open source software in 2023, and 33% said their usage increased significantly. The most significant growth was reported among respondents in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

“It’s exciting to see open source software being more broadly embraced and adopted on a worldwide basis,” said Thabang Mashologu, VP, Marketing & Community Programs at the Eclipse Foundation. “The insights from this year's State of Open Source Report are consistent with the growth we are seeing within our own communities, both in terms of project contributions and new members. We expect this positive trend to continue as more organisations recognise the technology and business advantages that come through active open source participation.”

Finally, the report indicates that databases and data technologies received the most investment in 2023, followed by Cloud-native software and container orchestration technologies.

“The interest in data technologies goes hand in hand with the exponential growth happening right now in the AI/ML/DL space,” explains Stefano Maffulli, Executive Director of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). “AI/ML/DL models are trained on massive amounts of data, so it follows that investment in open source data technologies is surging. OSI is committed to helping drive the conversation around how to define open-source AI.”

The 2024 State of Open Source Report is now available via this link: https://ter.li/14fyy2