The Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report

I highly recommend making some time to read the The Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report. Based on a census of the Australian Open Source community conducted at the end of last year, it presents a range statistics about the state of the Open Source community and industry in Australia.

The report seems to be aimed at demonstrating to Government and Businesses that Open Source has become a very viable business strategy in Australia and in particular how increased adoption of Open Source would reduce the Australian trade deficit. You don’t need to worry about being put to sleep. The report is relatively casual in tone and easy to read with lots of bright graphs to present the key statistics and findings. Including:

• The Australian Open Source industry generates around AUD$500M in annual revenue. A small proportion of the AUD$54.4B total revenue for the Australian ICT Industry in 2004-2005. Lots of growth potential!
• 70-80% of the industry is based on the traditional development, customisation, support and maintenance business model.
• Most of the individuals making up the Australian Open Source community are working professionals, over half the community are in a relationship and a third of the community have children.

It would be fascinating to see a similar study of the New Zealand industry. I suspect that we would find that Open Source businesses are spread across the country similar to Australia. Obviously our community and financial figures would be smaller in absolute terms but would our proportion of Open Source based businesses be similar?

Maybe a good task for the current NZOSS committee would be to round up some of the larger Open Source businesses in New Zealand, along with the Ministry of Economic Development to sponsor a similar study for New Zealand!

Comments

Comment by Pia Waugh on 2008-05-01 13:04:36 +1200

We would love to do a NZ census! 🙂 We’ve also had interest from other countries too, so this is looking pretty good.