Open Source Adoption Way Behind in U.S., U.K

Almost as a follow up to the article written here about open source in these United States, an article in Tech Connect states that world wide, open source is much more well received, not to mention used, in places other than the United States and the United Kingdom.

Open source elsewhere is thought of highly enough that nations use it to run things. The fact that large nations use it, and are still functioning well, should be enough to bring about some change…but no, not yet.

British survey experts Survey Interactive have released reports showing that a nice 42% of businesses surveyed were currently using open source software on their computers, where an additional 22% were looking to do so some time soon but had not yet taken action, while the remainder were still skeptical about its overall use and functionality up against proprietary software.

The adoption rate is still very slow in the United States and the United Kingdom, and in comparison to France and Germany who are up in the 65-70% adoption rate, and even more dramatically still behind China who have some 80% of companies using open source applications.

“The proportion of UK respondents who feel that the benefits of open source software outweigh the inhibitors has decreased this year,” read the report. “Significantly, the UK continues to demonstrate a degree of reticence towards open source adoption, with almost a quarter still monitoring developments but not yet evaluating.”

The situation should be changing at a greater rate, but there seems to be a stubborn nature with the people of these countries against a move to something different. The reason why is not easily found. it may be something in the collective psyche.

One thing is certain, open source software is not something to be afraid of, or relegated to things that are easily explained as frivolous, such as browser choice. Software that is free still can have value-added benefit to produce revenue; a look at Red Hat, Novell (as of late), and Sun  are all it takes for proof of that.

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