Open Source Is Here To Stay On IBM iSeries

For years, open source software has been a bit of a redheaded stepchild in the button-down IBM midrange community. IBM i shops were hesitant to use it, and vendors were afraid to adopt it. But with so much of the computing world now running on open source, the aversion to open source has gradually melted away, and it has steadily crept into use among large corporations, and the IBM i world too.

It is tough to measure the adoption of open source software, which flows freely across networks by its very nature. Nobody requires you to register to use open source software, and there's no central clearinghouse of information about open source software...

Governmental agencies lead the way in use of open source software, according to Black Duck Software's 2013 Future of Open Source survey. More than 35 percent of government representatives queried for the survey say they use open source, followed by medical (15.2 percent), media (13 percent), financial (8.8 percent), and retail (5.9 percent). You can view more of the survey at Slideshare.

Increasingly, users are adopting open source software because they expect higher software quality and security with open source, according to surveys like those from Black Duck. That's very interesting, because for many years, open source software was largely avoided for those two very reasons.