The amount of money invested in the open source ecosystem will exceed 1.2 trillion yen in 2024

A joint research team from Harvard University, the Linux Foundation, and GitHub has released a report on the results of a survey on open source project funding, which revealed that the organizations surveyed invested $1.7 billion in the open source ecosystem in one year. Since the survey was limited, the total investment in the open source ecosystem as a whole is estimated to be $7.7 billion.

2024 Open Source Software Funding Report

Understanding the State of Open Source Funding in 2024

The research team received responses from open source program offices (OSPOs) , engineering directors, and executives at 501 organizations via mailing lists at the Linux Foundation and GitHub, and the TODO Group . The top location of the organizations that responded was the United States and Canada (44%), followed by Europe (39%), Asia-Pacific (11%), Africa (4%), and Central and South America (including Mexico) (2%).

Forty-four percent of organizations have or would like to create an open source project owner (OSPO), 24% use them, and 21% actively contribute to projects, while 18% release some kind of project, and 16% influence projects through leadership or maintainer roles.

Additionally, 159 respondents said their organizations have invested $1.7 billion in the open source software ecosystem, and an estimate that includes organizations not surveyed puts the total investment in the open source ecosystem at $7.7 billion.

However, of the 325 respondents who said they 'contribute in some way to open source,' 55% answered that they contributed financially, but when it came to the question 'How many hours of work do employees at your organization spend on OSS?' the response rate dropped to 20%, which is an important blind spot.

Based on these findings, the research team has developed and released a toolkit to help organizations understand how they invest in and contribute to open source software, 'helping them better understand and track their investments.'

GitHub - sboysel/open-source-funding-toolkit: A collection of resources to improve insight into your organization's open source contribution
https://github.com/sboysel/open-source-funding-toolkit