Australian Open Source Report

Waugh Partners just released the The Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report. The report was commissioned and executed by Waugh Partners, with the financial support of sponsors, NICTA, IBM and Fujitsu. The data was collected by online surveys conducted from October to December 2007. The industry survey was aimed at “companies that sell, support or service Open Source related technologies in the Australian market.”

Jeff Waugh has street cred in the open source community as a GNOME developer and former community manager for Ubuntu. His partner and wife Pia Waugh is a open source advocate and President of Software Freedom International which sponsors the annual open source conscience raising event – Software Freedom Day.

Here are some findings that caught my eye.

• Australia’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Trade Deficit is $21 billion …80% of the total Australian trade deficit.
• Conservative estimates suggest Open Source related activities generate about $500 million in the Australian market.
• Most of the industry (70-80%) provides the classic mainstays of Open Source services –
  software development and customisation, implementation and migration, and support and maintenance. Not only do these represent the most common commercial services, but also the top three most lucrative, from which 75% of respondents made the majority of their income.
• Only 16% of the Open Source industry have received external funding, of which 62% enjoy Federal or State Government support.

[The dollar referred to in this report is the Australian dollar which converts to about $.916 US Dollars]

The complete report in PDF format is available here.

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Technorati Tags: Australia, opensource, research, Waugh

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