Quantifying the Interest in Open Source Systems: Case South-East Finland

Open source systems (OSS) has emerged as one of the most interesting phenomena in software engineering today. Unfortunately, only little hard data is available to quantify the interest in OSS in commercially operating software houses. As a part of a local initiative to increase the alignment between the software industry and software engineering research and education, a state of the practice survey was conducted in the local software houses. Due to the globally recognized interest in OSS some explorative questions on the topic were included in the survey. The results of the survey indicate widespread interest in OSS in the industry, and even though the study had a strictly regional focus, the results provide quantitative support for future research on OSS.