Is a company a good citizen of open source communities or guilty of “openwashing”? The question gets asked almost anytime a corporation markets a product as open source or announces that software has been open sourced. Along with The Linux Foundation’s TODO Group and VMware, The New Stack has conducted research about open source in the enterprise that provides data and a framework to answer the question.
Key findings of the study were:
- Google’s open source brand is stronger than its peers.
- Compared to all respondents, the most active upstream contributors view Microsoft and Intel more positively; the opposite is true for AWS.
- Companies deeply involved with the community make buying decisions that are significantly influenced by a vendor’s open source citizenship.
- Large tech companies are most likely to be actively involved in open source ecosystems; 75% contribute to projects upstream, compared to 41% for the overall study.
The complete article can be found here.
