Eran Strod's blog

In a recent Back Duck survey, we found that companies doing software development are using significant amounts of open source software; about 22% of code was identified as originating from an OSS project.

The cost savings from strategic use of open source can free up precious software development resources and compress project schedules. To calculate how much, see the Black Duck ROI calculator.

In 2009, developers created an average of 52 new projects per day.  These projects cover the spectrum of functionality from games to tools to desktop applications to frameworks.  Everyone is familiar with Linux, Apache, MySQL and other well known projects.  Brand new projects don’t always receive the same level of awareness, so at Black Duck Software we set out to remind people that great new projects are being created every day.  That’s the motivation behind our annual list of open source “Rookies of the Year.”   Congratulations to our 2009 winners and their developers!

If you manage a large software organization, should code reduction be the first bullet in your 2010 strategy?

According to Finnish computer scientist Jussi Koskinen, the cost of software maintenance can account for >50 to >90% of an overall software development budget.  With code bases doubling every seven years, maintenance is the budget buster of software development.

So a 200 person software organization, that pays developers $100,000 per year, is spending $20M annually on software development.   $10M to $18M of this is devoted to code maintenance.  Each 1% reduction in the size of the code base represents $100,000 to $180,000 of resources that you can reassign to tasks that create greater business value.

By far the best session at the 451 Group Client Conference that I attended last week was a panel led by analyst Matthew Aslett titled “Open Source To the Rescue?”   When the 451 Group started their open source practice some years back, they named it “Commercial Adoption of Open Source” or CAOS which was a clever play on the state of extreme disorder and confusion that existed within enterprises trying to use and engage with open source at that time.  Today, no one remembers what all the fuss was about.   As Matt pointed out in his talk, open source is ubiquitous and pervasive; the Economist has declared that “Open-source software has won the argument.”

Open source developers may not realize it but in certain circumstances their work is subject to export regulation. When open source developers create an account on SourceForge.net they are required to agree to SF’s terms and conditions. Checking that innocuous little box to “opt-in,” they are acknowledging that they are aware and pledge to comply with Section 740.13(e) of the Export Administration Regulations (”EAR”) 15 C.F.R. Parts 730-772.

There are only three facts that you need to know about the above: