A Statistical Study and Analysis to Identify the Importance of Open-source Software

1. A Statistical Study and Analysis to Identify the
Importance of Open-source Software
Mudigonda Himansh
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
SRM University-AP
Andhra Pradesh, India
mudigonda.himanshh@gmail.com
V. M. Manikandan
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
SRM University-AP
Andhra Pradesh, India.
Email: manikandan.v@srmap.edu.in
Abstract—Open-Source Software has picked up pace in the
past decade with support from Multinational conglomerates and
huge Open-Source communities. We hear a lot about the success
of many open-source projects, but we fail to understand how
many do not make it. In this paper, we understand the dynamics
behind open-source software. We start with the need for Open-
Source Alternatives. Then look at a few concerns faced by Open-
Source Software developers and maintainers. Next, we would
understand the various requirements of Open-Source Software.
Later, we would touch upon the various attributes that affect
the selection of Open-Source Software and the decisions to be
taken while building general-purpose Open-Source Software.
Then we would analyze the 5-determinants of Open-Source
Software success. Finally, we would look at the data collected
from 482 datapoints from 24 countries and then analyze the
data by forming graphs and charts.
Index Terms—Open-Source Software (OSS), Requirements of
OSS, Developers, Success of OSS, Proprietary Software, Privacy,
Security.
I. INTRODUCTION
Open-Source Software provides the license for the users
to run the program for any purpose, study and modify the
program, redistribute copies of either the original or modified
program without having to pay any royalty to the original au-
thor. Whereas, the proprietary software is a software program
that is offered for sale and comes with a developer-approved
license that has control over the source code. The supplier or
the developer holds ownership or intellectual property rights
over the software. This restricts users, user-turned-developed
to modify the code and redistribute [1], [2].
II. CONTRIBUTORS STATISTICS
TABLE I
OPEN-SOURCE CONTRIBUTORS (TOP 7) 2016 [3]
Name Active Contributors Total Community
Google 538 1510
Red Hat 533 1265
Microsoft 445 1159
Intel 183 841
Pivotal 170 386
IBM 167 705
Mozilla 152 358
TABLE II
OPEN-SOURCE CONTRIBUTORS(TOP 7) 2021 [3]
Name Active Contributors Total Community
Microsoft 4428 9239
Google 4204 8509
Red Hat 2865 4260
IBM 1693 4218
Intel 1573 3461
Amazon 1316 3429
Facebook 1053 3128
A. Observations
As indicated by the Tables above, we can see the sharp
rise in the contributors and developers getting into the Open-
Source community. With the rise of projects like Mozilla
Firefox and Linux Codebase, we can see the toll count
growing.
III. FAILURE ANALYSIS
In 2021, we see many successful projects like Linux,
FreeBSD, and MySQL we fail to acknowledge the number
of Open-Source software that fails. According to Source-
Forge, the most famous Open-source portal, most Open-Source
projects have failed. 58 percent do not move beyond the alpha
developmental stage, while 22 percent remain in the planning
phase, 17 percent remain in the pre-alpha stage, others become
inactive. World Bank study says a failure rate of more than 50
percent for Open-Source Software projects. [4] SourceForge
has researched various causes of project failure and found 7
major reasons leading to project failures. The developer has
lost interest. Lack of resources or funds. Misunderstandings
within the project team. The project is lagging. The project
is becoming too big. No standards or quality control. Legal
Problems.
• According to [5], the Selection of the most appropriate
software from the vast amount of available technologies
to build the environment in multi-developer teams is a
tough and complicated decision to make.
• In the initial stages, many developers did not consider
ease of use and system look-and-feel as an important
feature. This resulted in a less user-friendly application
that resulted in lesser customer retention and satisfaction.
978-1-6654-0670-3/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE
2022
International
Conference
on
Innovative
Trends
in
Information
Technology
(ICITIIT)
|
978-1-6654-0670-3/22/$31.00
©2022
IEEE
|
DOI:
10.1109/ICITIIT54346.2022.9744176
Authorized licensed use limited to: COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 18,2022 at 06:58:30 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

2. IV. NEED FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
In the 21st century, we come across many case studies about
the security of applications being compromised, the privacy
of users being invaded, users being key-logged and hacked.
Open-source software can provide solutions to most of the
problems that we read.
Given below is a list of characteristics of Open-source
software.
Fig. 1. Characteristics of OSS
• Openness and Transparency.
Transparency is an important pillar that assures the safety
and privacy of the user. This enables the user to trust and
be confident about their personal data.
To include transparency in Open-source software, de-
velopers either use cross-community environments or
have a public disclosure. Cross-teams and community
collaboration are keys to maintaining privacy, security,
and safety standards. [6]
• Flexibility
Open-Source Software serves as a flexible alternative
to proprietary software as they are vendor-independent,
customizable source code, the community encouraged de-
velopment, and ongoing collaboration and maintenance.
This results in custom code that satisfies the need of users
and user-turned-developers.
Understanding that the community consists of the core
developer, developers, user-turned-developers, users, we
can realize that the software that comes out after produc-
tion and bug fixes are highly customized and task and
work-specific software. This shows the flexibility of the
software and the community. [7]
• Speed
The Open-Source Software development is sped up using
the following tactics.
– Faster and easier acquisitions
– Quicker deployments
– Rapid evolution and innovation
– High quality
– Ease of customization
– Evolutionary delivery
As there are no purchase orders, contracts, or negotia-
tions, it is faster to acquire or contribute to open-source
software. Open-Source usually comes from a download-
and-go philosophy, this reduces the time to conFig.and
set up the environment. [8]
• Motivation and Community
According to the recent studies made by Forrester Re-
search Study, Mature Open-Source Software met or ex-
ceeds the expectations 92 percent of the time. The main
reason is the extensive community- testing and bug fixing.
The motivation comes from the constant discussions and
support of a strongly built developer and user community.
[8]
• Security
Since Open-Source believes in the ideology of source
code being accessible, we can state the fact that source
visibility does little to increase the security risks. In most
cases, can even improve the stability and security of the
software. [9]
Considering the philosophy mentioned before, having
the source code visible has a few side effects that can
be beneficial, such as unsolicited security reviews or
software reuse. Code leaks are considerable issues for
proprietary software. This will not be an issue for Open-
Source software. This diminishes the value of information
hiding.
• Privacy If we look at the kinds of data that are subject to
privacy concerns, they include regulated data, employee
data, unregulated data, competitor-sensitive data, creden-
tials. There are online databases and tools that track
vulnerabilities in Open-Source libraries.
Most vendors that include any kind of open-source soft-
ware, provide their users with regular patches and fixes.
V. REQUIREMENT OF OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
The major requirements of Open-Source software are listed
in this section [10]
• Technical Requirements
– Availability of technical support
– Future functional upgradability
– Open-standard compatibility
– Customizability and extensibility
– High Reliability
• Management Requirements
– Budgetary
– Development team
– Licensing and project scope
– Long-term maintainability
• Other Requirements
– Customer support
Authorized licensed use limited to: COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 18,2022 at 06:58:30 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

3. – Backward compatibility
– Standard compatibility
– Binary availability
– Integration with commercial software and products
– Commercial adoption
– OS dependency
– Software Licensing
– Current development status
– Commercial substitutes
A. Technical Requirements
For any project or software, technical support plays a vital
part to maintain the flow of execution. A project is defined
by its use and its functionality. For that reason, functional
upgradability is also to be a requirement. Open Standards are
defined as widely accepted standard that is to be followed for
consistency across all use cases. As Open-Source software, it
is to be highly customizable and extensible as it is one of the
principles of Open-Source Initiative.
B. Management requirements
When it comes to the management of Open-Source Soft-
ware, it is important to allocate required resources and funds
to the teams working on the project. The quality of the project
and the results are dependent on the understanding and skill
of the development and ideation team. The next thing to be
looked at is the licensing and project scope. The licensing of a
project acts as a knight to the developer and the user as well.
The types of licenses available would be looked at later on in
the paper.
C. Other requirements
For most of the developed projects (proprietary or open-
source), the customer/client is made the base user. The support
for the customers is as important as the development of the
project. For every new version, backward compatibility is to be
maintained to retain the present users. Standard, as discussed
before, should be maintained as well to continue to provide
better and higher quality software.
Application binary or the final project binary is usually
considered as the outcome of the effort put into the devel-
opment. Presently, Open-Source is used alongside proprietary
software to complete the clients/developers’ productive cycle.
The commercial adoption of the project is important and
hence is a requirement. Most of the binaries developed are
different for different Operating Systems as they have different
architecture and implementations. Hence the Operating System
compatibility and stability are also to be maintained.
VI. SELECTION AND DECISION PROCESS OF
OPEN-SOURCE PROJECTS
A. Selection Process
Wheeler identifies the 15 attributes that affect the selection
of Open-Source Software: [11]
• Functionality
• Cost
• Market Share
• Support
• Reproduction
• Maintenance
• Reliability
• Performance
• Scalability
• Usability
• Security
• Flexibility
• Customizability
• Interoperability
• Legal and license issues
B. Decision process during initiation [11]
• Strategy and planning
• Product organizational development
• Project management
C. Decision process within the projects [11]
• Concept development
• Supply chain design
• Product design
• Performance testing and validation
• Product ramp-up
• Launch
VII. OPEN-SOURCE LICENSES
A. MIT LICENSE
The MIT license gives users express permission to reuse
code for any purpose, even if the code is part of the proprietary
software. It grants any person who obtains a copy of the
software and associated files the right to use, copy, modify,
merge, distribute, publish, sublicense, and sell copies of the
software.
The MIT license is classified as Copyleft, BSD-style, and
Permissive license.
B. BSD LICENSE
BSD License can refer to anyone in a family of BSD
Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) licenses. The 4-clause
BSD License from 1990 is widely accepted as the original
BSD license. The 4-clause BSD License required users to in-
clude the copyright notice in other distributions while repaying
the original contributors and mandating acknowledgments on
all documentations, and advertising materials.
Later in 1999, a revised version of the BSD License, 3-
Clause BSD License was established as the previously ac-
cepted 4-clause BSD License’s Advertising clause was incom-
patible with GNU General Public License (GLP). BSD License
is a copyleft or BSD-style and Permissive license.
Authorized licensed use limited to: COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 18,2022 at 06:58:30 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

4. TABLE III
WIDELY USED OPEN-SOURCE LICENSES [12]
MIT License BSD License Apache License GNU License
Popular Yes Yes Yes Yes
License Type Permissive Permissive Permissive Strongly Copyleft
Jurisdiction Not Specified Not Specified Not Specified Not Specified
Grants patent rights No No Yes No
Patent retaliation clause No No Yes No
Specifies enhanced attribution No No No No
Addresses privacy loophole No No No No
Includes ‘no promotion‘ feature Yes Yes Yes Yes
C. APACHE LICENSE
Apache License 2.0 allows users of the software to dis-
tribute, modify, or otherwise use software for any purpose,
as long as they are in line with the terms and conditions. The
user cannot remove existing copyright, patent, trademarks, and
attribution notices.
A limitation of the Apache License is the requirement to
add prominent notification of any changes made to a file.
D. GNU LICENSE
GPL, GNU’s General Public License was written by Richard
Stallman in 1989 for Open-Source Software. This license
prevents software from becoming proprietary. It is an imple-
mentation of FSF’s (Free Software Foundation) philosophy
and Stallman’s copyleft concept of software development and
distribution.
GNU grants the following rights to its users:
• The right to download and run software freely.
• The right to make changes to the software.
• The right to redistribute copies of the software
• The right to modify and distribute copies of modified
software.
The copyleft is a copyright spin implementing all copyright
laws and preventing Open-Source Software from becoming
proprietary software.
Other Licenses include the following: AGPL, LGPL, EPL,
MPL, and versions of them.
VIII. FIVE DETERMINANTS OF OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
SUCCESS
Given below are the five determinants of Open-Source
Software Success:
• Software quality
Software quality can be enhanced by early testing. Testing
with automated software is recommended. Another way
to increase software quality is by implementing quality
control from the initial alpha stages.
• Community service quality
To enhance community service quality, better community
moderators are important. Communication is key. Seeking
feedback and feedback loop is to be strictly followed.
Focused and friendly conversations to be maintained to
keep the community polished.
• User satisfaction
User feedback is the main activity that would form the
basis of better user satisfaction as having a 1st hand user
perspective is important. Technical support or customer
service plays another vital role to handle requests and
complaints from the users.
• Usage
The usage of the Open-Source Software is to be clearly
defined during the initial ideation phases. This makes the
objective of the work clear and streamlined. Not having
strict focus and usage guidelines ultimately deters the
software from its initial development purpose.
• Individual net benefit
To understand the concept of individual net benefit, lets
us consider the fact that software is used to satisfy a
particular function or purpose. Having the purpose solved
would mean a benefit to the end-user. The cumulative
measure of the benefits and efficiency of work done will
contribute to the net user benefit. [4]
Fig. 2. Five determinants of Open-Source Software Success
IX. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USING COLLECTED DATA
We have performed a data analysis on an open survey
collected by us from 12th
August 2021 to 15th
August 2021.
We have collected 428 responses from 24 countries (Argentina,
Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Egypt,
Authorized licensed use limited to: COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 18,2022 at 06:58:30 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

5. France, Germany, Haiti, India, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Mexico,
Nepal, Nigeria, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, UK, USA).
We have asked basic questions and the method of answers is
multiple-choice-questions.
We have not collected any kind of sensitive personal data.
Data parameters are:
• Age
• Country
• Familiarization with Open-Source
• Usage of Open-Source
• Thoughts on the idea of shifting to Open-Source
• Resistance for migration
• Future of Open-Source market share
Given Below are the graphical interpretations of the data
collected:
Fig. 3. Age of the participants
In Fig. 3 we see the participants’ ages. we can see that the
age group is dominated by the age group between 11-25.
Fig. 4. Participant’s location
Referring to the Fig.4 and Fig. 5 we see the concentration
of participants in different nations across the globe.
Based on the collected data, we can see 84.3 percentage of
participants are aware of Open-Source Software and its basic
understanding of it. 7.2 percent are unaware and 8.4 percent
are not sure, as shown in Fig. 6.
In Fig. 7 we can see 79.9 percent of participants realize
that they have used an Open-Source Software or Platform
sometime in their lives.
Fig. 5. Location of participants
Fig. 6. Familiarization with Open-Source
Fig. 7. Usage of Open-Source
Around 175 participants are comfortable with the idea of
Open-Source replacing the proprietary software. Around the
same number are not sure about the future of Open-Source.
Rest minority of participants think that Open-Source isn’t an
alternative for proprietary software, as shown in Fig. 8.
Fig. 9 shows that 56.7 percent of the participants are ready
to migrate to Open-Source software, while 14.5 percent of
them are not sure, and 28.8 percent of the participants are
not comfortable with the idea of migrating to Open-Source
Software/Applications/Platforms.
Authorized licensed use limited to: COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 18,2022 at 06:58:30 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

6. Fig. 8. Prediction of future of Open-Source
Fig. 9. Migration to Open-Source
X. CONCLUSION
We started by looking at the dynamics of building Open-
Source projects. Then, we understood the importance of shift-
ing to Open-Source software. We analyzed the risks posed by
proprietary software. Having to go through the decisions to be
made before the initiation process of the project we understand
the effect that a decision has on the path of the Open-Source
project has. Then we looked at the most widely used Licenses
and their features and their scope. Later, we explored the 5
determinants that contribute to the success of Open-Source
Software/Projects. Later we conducted the statistical studies by
collecting and analyzing responses of the conducted survey on
Open-Source software, with 428 data points from participants
from 24 countries. This gave us a brief overview of the
perspective of users and user-turned-developers. Their outlook
on the future of Open-Source Software and its market share.
Therefore, we can conclude that a good number of people
are interested and are ready to shift into an Open-Source
alternative, and we can believe in a future where the market
share is dominated by Open-source or Open-Source based
Software/Applications/Platforms.
REFERENCES
[1] V. Lenarduzzi, D. Taibi, D. Tosi, L. Lavazza, and S. Morasca, “Open
source software evaluation, selection, and adoption: a systematic litera-
ture review,” in 2020 46th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineer-
ing and Advanced Applications (SEAA). IEEE, 2020, pp. 437–444.
[2] S. Shahrivar, S. Elahi, A. Hassanzadeh, and G. Montazer, “A business
model for commercial open source software: A systematic literature
review,” Information and Software Technology, vol. 103, pp. 202–214,
2018.
[3] Statistics and D. Org, “Top companies contributing to open
source – 2011/2020,” https://statisticsanddata.org/data/top-companies-
contributing-to-open-source-2011-2020/, accessed: 10-07-2021.
[4] S.-Y. T. Lee, H.-W. Kim, and S. Gupta, “Measuring open source software
success,” Omega, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 426–438, 2009.
[5] I. Svetel, A. urović, and V. Grabulov, “Prompt system redesign: shifting
to open source technology to satisfy user requirements,” Computer
Science and Information Systems, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 441–457, 2010.
[6] A. J. Santamaria, “Why transparency is critical to your open
source project’s security,” https://opensource.com/article/21/6/security-
transparency, 2021, [Online; accessed 6-August-2021].
[7] T. L. FOUNDATION, “Why Using Open Source Soft-
ware Helps Companies Stay Flexible and Innovate,”
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/why-using-open-source-software-
helps-companies-stay-flexible-and-innovate/, 2017, [Online; accessed
7-August-2021].
[8] ——, “Using Open Source Software to Speed Development and
Gain Business Advantage,” https://linuxfoundation.org/blog/using-open-
source-software-to-speed-development-and-gain-business-advantage/,
2017, [Online; accessed 7-August-2021].
[9] S. Kuchinskas, “Microsoft’s loss not linux gain,”
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32777.pdf, 2005, [Online; accessed
5-August-2021].
[10] H. Wang and C. Wang, “Open source software adoption: A status report,”
IEEE Software, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 90–95, 2001.
[11] O. Ahmed, “Migrating from proprietary to open source learning content
management systems,” Ph.D. dissertation, Carleton University, 2005.
[12] Statistics and D. Org, “Top companies contributing to open
source – 2011/2020,” https://statisticsanddata.org/data/top-companies-
contributing-to-open-source-2011-2020/, accessed: 10-07-2021.
Authorized licensed use limited to: COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 18,2022 at 06:58:30 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.