April 15, 2008 7:33 AM PDT
Open-source code base doubles every year
Statistics like these from a TechSolve researcher have got to frighten the Proprietary Bloc that persists in believing open source won't adversely impact their businesses:
Based on the models developed for the "Exponential Growth of Open Source" study we calculated the time required to double the number of projects and the total open source code. It took approximately 13.89 months to double the total number of open source projects from 1995-2006....On the same lines, it took around 12.49 months to double the total open source lines of code for the projects considered. That means every year (plus a month or so) both the total number of projects and lines of code double!
That's a heck of a lot of open-source software, and it just keeps doubling every year. At this rate, will there be any proprietary software left to ridicule?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
