Linux in the Marketplace

The OSDL has presented a paper on its website which is an IDC report about Linux in the Marketplace. This report is about future trends and growth opportunities for Linux to 2008.

Overall, they see a great deal of growth; upwards of 26% growth end-over-end to 2008. The largest growth is in the “packaged software” market which they are projecting will become an $16 billion market by 2008. Very exciting times.

One statement on slide #5 that surprised me a bit was: “Free” Linux deployments are attractive, but the reality is more commercial and government organizations will move toward paid, supported copies. To me, the numbers don’t really show this. What I read there is that the “Free” Linux deployments are growing at a much greater pace than the paid subscription and support versions. This also does not take into account that some vendors do pay for support for the “Free” Linux distributions.

I would say that this is a great opportunity for a company to form that would address the support question for the “Free” distributions out there. If you can build it in such a way that you give plenty of joy to the community and not just re-package an old business model on a “new thing” then I think you’d make a fortune. Heck, I’ll even work there …