Enterprises on average used a whopping 94 different open source packages last year, compared to 75 in 2006.
OpenLogic, which provides enterprises with a certified library of open source software that encompasses hundreds of open source packages via OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX), also found that Apache is still the most common license in packages used in enterprises today.
Its breakdown of licenses for the top 25 packages found that Apache, not the GPL (GNU General Public License), is the most common. 62% of the packages use Apache, 27% use some variant of GPL and 4% each use BSD, CPL, Eclipse, MPL, and Perl licenses. (Since packages may be released under two or more licenses, the percentages total more than 100%).
OpenLogic also said it plans this year to launch The Open Source Census, which it said will expand the statistics collected and reported on enterprise open source adoption.
The Open Source Census, announced by OpenLogic in December 2007, is described as a collaborative initiative designed to provide enterprises with a way to easily inventory the open source software installed on their machines, and anonymously submit that data to The Open Source Census.
Data collected in The Open Source Census will be aggregated and shared publicly on the internet and will also be available to the enterprises who contribute data.
In the meantime, OpenLogic also analyzed the most popular open source packages in the enterprise. It ranked the most common 25 open source packages, as reported by enterprises. Hibernate and Struts topped the list with more than 71% of customers using each.
The top 10 by rank were: Hibernate; Struts; Xerces; Log4j; Ant; Jakarta Commons; JUnit; Axis; Spring Framework (Spring); and POI. Eclipse made it in at number 11, while the Apache HTTP server was at 12.
