I think you're begging the question here by deliberately selecting a minor  app like Keypass as your example. We were talking about enterprise apps rather than desktop weren't we?

-40hz (December 25, 2008, 02:21 PM)

Finally you got it! Now you have a number (85%) and NO additional information and you're so happy to read about 85% completely neglecting the fact that you don't know a thing about what this number consists of.

And it's also instructive to remember that many large and successful corporations (Microsoft included) started out as very small businesses.

-40hz (December 25, 2008, 02:21 PM)

Sorry to rain on your parade, but 99% of Mom and Pop's businesses will either stay as Mom and Pop's businesses or go out of business altogether.

PS.
No, I'm not working for Microsoft.

The details are available. Unfortunately, the cited survey was conducted by Gartner Group, so it will cost you some serious money to read them.

That is exactly why getting one number (85%) and publishing an article about the pervasiveness of (F)OSS is a pure sensationalism. Without actually answering the questions like those I posted above the number alone doesn't make any sense.

Thanks for Netcraft stats, but it has nothing to do with this survey.

-wasker (December 24, 2008, 06:18 PM)

Out of curiosity, how would you know, unless you have a spare $1295 lying around? (see above)

-40hz (December 24, 2008, 11:33 PM)

Because if you count in Internet in whole and web infrastructure in particular, your 85% would be 100%.

Still, I have to disagree. Web is at the heart of much of what is considered "enterprise." And Apache deployment is steadily growing.

-40hz (December 24, 2008, 11:33 PM)

Oh yeah? Are we looking at the same chart? Starting from 2006 Apache's share goes down and Microsoft's up...

(Although, it's funny that Microsoft's stacks is in comparable numbers with FOSS' -- check the numbers like 5 or 10 years ago).

-wasker (December 24, 2008, 06:18 PM)

I'm not sure what you're saying here...but OK. ;D

-40hz (December 24, 2008, 11:33 PM)

See above.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a cheerleader for open source. FOSS will ultimately stand or sink on its technical and economic merits - not its philosophy or good intentions. But I hardly think it's unreasonable to believe that just about every company will be using some open source app in the near future. I can't think of a single company or client that I'm dealing with that hasn't deployed at least one piece of FOSS/OSS software in the last two years. I find that interesting, since four years ago, only one of them had.

-40hz (December 24, 2008, 11:33 PM)

Actually you do sound like a cheerleader. ;) See, I'm not debating the fact that companies use (F)OSS, I'm debating the fact that 85% number doesn't make sense without any supplemental information that may make this number read a little bit different, that you might think.