Commercial Software Will Include Open Source, Gartner Says
IT organizations will have to manage open-source software along with commercial software, Gartner says. — LAS VEGAS—At least 80 percent of all commercial software products will include elements of open-source code by 2010 …
Context & Ripple Effects
Gartner's forecast, delivered at its Las Vegas symposium, extends an arc that began with what trade press called open source "2.0" — the 2005 arrival of a second wave of open-source vendors selling supported, enterprise-grade software rather than hobbyist distributions. Two years on, the analyst firm is no longer treating open source as a separate product category but as an ingredient inside commercial software itself.
The claim matters because it reframes the buyer's problem: by 2010, Gartner says, at least 80 percent of commercial software products will contain open-source code, so IT organizations will have no choice but to manage open-source components inside their existing commercial portfolios rather than as an optional alternative.
First-order effects
- IT organizations must stand up governance for open-source components — license obligations, provenance tracking, and support arrangements — inside portfolios they had previously managed purely through commercial vendor contracts.
- Commercial software vendors shipping code with embedded open-source elements inherit those licenses' terms, making compliance and disclosure part of their own product obligations.
Second-order effects
- If four-fifths of commercial products carry open-source elements, per-seat license pricing comes under pressure, since buyers can increasingly compare paid products against the freely available components embedded within them.
- Vendors that resist blending open-source code into their stacks risk being undercut by rivals whose hybrid products offer similar functionality at lower license cost.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the distinction between "open source" and "commercial" software erodes as a purchasing category, and procurement shifts toward evaluating how well each vendor governs and supports mixed-provenance code.
- Widespread embedded open source makes component-level auditing a standing discipline for regulators and large buyers, since every commercial product becomes, in part, a supply chain of community-written code.
The trend: Enterprise software is consolidating around hybrid stacks where open-source code is an embedded ingredient of commercial products, and Gartner's forecast cadence is pushing IT management to treat openness as governed infrastructure rather than a niche choice.