Open Source Software Moves Into All Businesses

Summary: A Black Duck survey and the Linux Collaboration Summit both show that open-source software and the open-source method are moving well beyond where you think they live, and into all businesses.

We all know open source has become an important tool in pure software development. What's now becoming clear, according to a Black Duck Software and North Bridge Venture Partners open-source survey that was released on April 17th and events at the Linux Foundation's Linux Collaboration Summit, is that open source is now helping improve enterprise networking, smart cars, and academia.

For example, at the Summit, the simple fact that The Linux Foundation was successful in getting such mortal business enemies as Big Switch, Cisco, and Juniper on the same page in the OpenDaylight Project to open-source software defined networking (SDN) is amazing. It's not just lip-service to finding a common way to implement SDN's core OpenFlow protocol, the members are putting in tens of millions of dollars in resources for code that will be openly shared with everyone — including non-members.