The
Linux Foundation announced the release of "Census
III of Free and Open Source Software - Application Libraries" (Census III) in collaboration with
the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard. The study identifies the most
widely-used free and open source software (FOSS) as application libraries.
Among its key insights, the study underlines the ongoing importance of open
source collaboration.
Census
III is the third study investigating the widespread use of open source software
and provides the most comprehensive aggregation of data to date. Derived from
over 12 million observations of FOSS libraries in production applications at
more than ten thousand companies, the report highlights critical trends shaping
the open source ecosystem.
The
Census III effort was conducted in partnership with Harvard University and
leading Software Composition Analysis (SCA) organizations, including Black
Duck, FOSSA, Snyk, and Sonatype. This collaboration advances the state of open
source research by combining insights and resources to better understand the
value and security of the OSS ecosystem.
Key Findings of Census III Report
The
report highlights several key trends and insights, such as:
1. The use of cloud
service-specific packages is increasing.
2. There is an ongoing
transition from Python 2 to Python 3.
3. Maven packages continue to
be widely used and there is an increased prevalence of NuGet and Python
packages.
4. Use of components from Rust
package repositories have increased considerably since Census II.
5. There continues to be a need
for the use of standardized naming schema for software components.
6. Much of the most widely used
FOSS is developed by only a handful of contributors.
7. Individual developer account
security is increasingly important.
8. Legacy software persists in
the open source space.
Census
III is authored by Frank Nagle, Harvard Business School, Kate
Powell, Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, Richie
Zitomer, Harvard Business School, and David A. Wheeler, Open
Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), The Linux Foundation.
To
read the report, download
the Census III of Free and Open Source Software - Application Libraries research study on the
Linux Foundation website.