Study: Open source finds its way into Switzerland
Open source has definitely arrived on the Swiss IT market: According to a study by the University of Bern, the already high use of open source increased significantly again last year.
Around 70 percent of Swiss companies rely on open source for web servers, databases, server systems or programming languages. Around a quarter are frequent users, i.e. at least half of them use open source technologies. This is the remarkable result of the Open Source Study Switzerland 2015. 38 public authorities, 98 ICT companies and 64 companies from other sectors were asked how and why they use open source software as part of the study.
Open source offers the opportunity to avoid the high license costs of commercial providers - and these can have a massive impact. The open standards and the community as a source of knowledge exchange are also seen as strengths by many respondents.
Nevertheless, there is still a lot of untapped potential with regard to open source, the authors of the study conclude. This applies in particular to public administration. It clearly lags behind the private sector, which uses open source in far more places. One of the reasons for this is probably the conditions for public tenders.
What still stands in the way of open source
The "bad reputation" of open source is no longer one of the most important obstacles. Instead, most of the companies surveyed cited a lack of interfaces (65%), dependencies on proprietary systems (64%), but also the lack of supplier liability (63%), which, according to the study, apparently unsettles many companies. The perceived lack of commercial support, to which 62% of respondents refer, is a cause for concern. In the case of proprietary software, the requested services can only be obtained from the manufacturer. In the open source sector, the market is more open and non-manufacturers are also allowed to offer support. Obviously, however, the demand for services is not sufficiently covered in every respect. (sis)
