Open source rising as the economy continues to fall

The market is clearly racing toward a bottom when we start looking to Monty Python for business advice and the most lucid (if profane) analysis of Google's announced open-source operating system, Chrome OS, comes from Fake Steve Jobs.

At least, not according to a survey of 200 IT executives by Computer Economics, which finds:

• About 49 percent of the IT executives surveyed plan to make further budget cuts in 2009.
• Almost 50 percent will spend less than what is allocated in their IT operational budget.

Not good, right? Well, it gets worse...

Forrester and Gartner are duking it out to see who can be gloomiest in their assessment of 2009 IT spending, as Baseline reports. Gartner sees global IT spending dropping 6 percent from 2008, while Forrester one-ups Gartner with a projected 10.6 percent decline. (Forrester had earlier projected a 3 percent dip for 2009.)

Actually, the economy being as rotten as it is, some companies are going against the economic grain by offering compelling open-source alternatives to traditional, proprietary software, as reported Wednesday. And it's intriguing to watch companies like Lockheed Martin get into open source as a way to shift costs and improve development of their software.

Yes, there are still open-source holdouts like Orange UK which has allegedly banned Firefox and anything more modern than Internet Explorer 6 from its call centers. The company is still accepting smoke signals as a form of communication, so we're trying to get the message through that open source can drive down costs and improve productivity.

That's OK. According to Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond, open source is "infiltrating the enterprise" on a grand scale now. What starts out as an interest in penny pinching turns into something much more, he says.

So, while I'm not cheering for ever-gloomier forecasts of IT spending, I will admit that I like the result: more open-source adoption.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.