A survey by Tidelift conducted with 638 professionals revealed that the propagation of the pandemic leads to increased adoption of open-source software.

Indeed, 44% of participants said that their businesses are more likely than ever to adopt open source. The main reason for that seems to be that using open source for application development during the downturn will save them time and money all the while increasing the efficiency of the application development and maintenance.

Yet, having open-source software still has its drawbacks. The most important challenges are about making the right decision on which component and version to employ, knowing when to upgrade components and frameworks, and identifying security vulnerabilities. There is only a small proportion of organizations that are completely sure that their open source components are secure, upgraded, and well-maintained.

Moreover, the report also found that more end-user organizations are contributing to open source projects or having new policies directing employee contributions to open source.

Although many businesses do believe that using open-source software will enable them to reduce costs, the speed at which software can be developed by a team working on an open-source project makes it hard for IT vendors to keep up. Even though organizations will continue using commercial software, the number of open-source software will keep on increasing, especially with the COVID-19 crisis.