Five out of six developers now using or deploying open source

Five out of six developers today use or have used open source tools or deployed open source software in their projects, a recent Forrester Research study revealed.

But in which software categories? The top five, according to the recent survey, are operating systems, web servers, relational database management systems, IDEs and software configuration management tools.

The vast majority -- 56 percent -- are using open source operating systems such as Linux in their development or deployment projects, according to the survey of almost 500 developers in a third quarter of this year

And more than half of those Dr Dobbs developers surveyed, that is, 52 percent, say they are using open source web servers, such as Apache Tomcat or NGINX. 

"Even in risk averse [industries, ie financial services industry], we're seeing high rates of open source adoption," said Jeffrey Hammond, a principal analyst at Forrester, in a recent webcast on the survey findings. "A lot are using TomCat and Red Hat JBoss as a mainstream part of their solutions."

Only one in six developers say they are not using open source software in their development or depolyment, said Hammond, noting the transformative effect open source has had on the developer community. 

"One reason we are seeing the accelerated push to open source adoption is becasue of the nature of how modern applications are changing," Hammond said. "There are new systems of engagement on top of systems of record.

The analyst  pointed to new types of application infrastructure such as new frameworks for Infrastructure-as-a-service,  Platform-as-a-Service offerings for the public cloud, in-memory caching to speed app response times (think Memcached or Ehcache) , mobile application management, and use of real-time analytics and mobile clients -- the switcfh from full blown applications to "apps."

Almost half -- 47 percent of the roughly 500 developers surveyed -- say they are using open source relational database management systems, with NoSQL databases on the rise. 13 percent of the 451 developers surveyed say they are using NoSQL databases. 

More than 40 percent are using or have deployed open source IDEs such as Eclipse or jQuery and 33 percent said they are using or have deployed open source configuration management tools as part of their applications as of late. 

App servers are up next. According to the survey, 28 percent of developers have embraced open source app servers, 22 percent have used open source build/release tools and 13 percent say they are using open source content management systems, such as Drupal or Jango. 

Fewer than 10 percent say they are using open source management tools (9 percent), business intelligence tools, suhc as Pentaho, jasperSoft and Actuate(7 percent), Release/Deployment tools (6 percent), open source portals/mash-ups (5 percent) and 4 percent say they are using open source business apps. 

What's your take? Does that sound like the trend in your organization?