SANTA CRUZ, CA, November 16, 2005 - Open source software (OSS) developers find and fix software bugs quickly, according to Evans Data Corp.’s Fall 2005 Open Source Software/Linux Development Survey. Seventeen percent of OSS developers find and repair severe bugs in less than 4 business hours on average. Another quarter say they can find and fix severe bugs in their software in four to eight business hours.

“Some of the main strengths of open source software development are the communities that have grown into knowledge repositories for development. Using these communities an open source developer can find and fix severe bugs much more rapidly,” said John Andrews, President of Evans Data Corporation. “The open source community has evolved to respond quickly to developer needs and we are finding extremely short bug resolution times in the open source space.”

Other findings from the October 2005 survey of more than 450 developers currently working on open source development:

• Ninety four percent of Linux developers’ systems have never been infected with a virus, up slightly from six months ago. Of those that have been infected, only 2% have been infected three or more times.
• The majority of open source developers, 64%, would purchase a tool for Linux if it worked well but wasn’t open source. Only 6% said they would “absolutely not” purchase a non-open-source tool for Linux.
• Twenty percent of OSS developers would be willing to pay between $200 and $500 a year for open source software support and 15% would be willing to pay between $500 and $1000 per year for support. A quarter of OSS developers wouldn’t be willing to pay any money for open source software support.

Evans Data Corporation provides regularly updated IT industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global developer population. Evans' syndicated research includes surveys focused on developers in a wide variety of subjects.

Copyright 2007 Evans Data Corporation. All other company names, products and services mentioned in this document are the trademarks and property of their respective owners.

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