The 2015 North Bridge & Black Duck Future of Open Source Study reviews 2015 Future of Open Source survey findings in the context of 9 years of research. The 2015 Survey was led by North Bridge & Black Duck in collaboration with Jeffrey Hammond, Forrester Research & 41 organizations–startups, large vendors & global foundations. The survey received 1300 completed responses from IT & business professionals across industry. The 2015 findings demonstrate the pervasive nature of open source & highlight the abundance of organizations participating in the open source community. 78% of respondents said their companies run part or all of its operations on OSS & 66% said their company creates software for customers built on open source. This statistic has nearly doubled since 2010, when 42% of respondents in the Future of Open Source survey five years ago said that they used open source in the running of their business or their IT environments. The growing corporate usage is attributable to the advantages provided by Open Source. Advantages sited included attracting top IT talent & the ability to innovate & create competitive advantage. Comparing Open Source to Proprietary software, open source wins in features, ease of deployment, & ability to scale. In 2-3 years, some factors show Open Source as superior-Security, Quality, & Ease of Deployment among them. The trend of Open Source shaping the future of new technology & security continues. Cloud computing, Big Data, Operating Systems, & the Internet of Things rose to the top of the list. When evaluating security technologies for internal use, 45% of respondents said open source options are given first consideration. Open source means business. Among key business attributes, open source fuels innovation & impacts both revenues & margins. However, below the surface, the growth of open source has also exposed some of the governance gaps that need to be addressed: More than 55% of respondents said their company has no formal policy or procedure for open source consumption. Moreover, only 27% have a formal policy for employee contributions to OSS projects. A mere 16% have an automated code approval process & less than 42% maintain an inventory of open source components. More than 50% are not satisfied with their ability to understand & known security vulnerabilities in open source components, & only 17% plan to monitor open source code for security vulnerabilities Open Source continues to attract investments from the Venture Capital Industry in early stage investments & more recently via acquisitions. In 2014, there were 39 deals completed for $3.9B. Within its own portfolio, North Bridge holds $1.3B in Open Source companies. Despite the governance gaps found in the survey and the need to pay closer attention to policies - Pervasiveness is evident…. So WHO WILL BE THE NEXT GREAT OPEN SOURCE COMPANY? Let us know who & when you think it will be. Follow us @FutureofOSS #FutureOSS