Cost savings and more safety

Seven out of ten companies (71 percent) make use of such freely available programs. And their use is likely to increase in the coming years. Only 7 percent say they are fundamentally critical or negative about open source, two-thirds (67 percent) say they are interested and open-minded, and another quarter (25 percent) are still undecided. These are the findings of a survey of 1152 companies with 20 or more employees in Germany commissioned by the digital association Bitkom.

The license of open source software allows the programs to be freely executed, the source code to be analyzed and adapted, and the software to be distributed even in modified variants. A prerequisite for this is that the source code of the software is openly accessible.

Currently, the larger the company, the more likely it is to use open source solutions. Among companies with 2,000 or more employees, 87 percent are the most likely to use open source. Companies with 20 to 99 employees are the least likely to use open source - but even among them, at 70 percent, it is a clear majority.

82 percent of companies see advantages in using open source software. The most important advantage is cost savings (24 percent). This is followed by access to the source code (14 percent) and an easier way to switch providers (8 percent), as well as high security through timely updates (7 percent).