Open source software appears to be becoming increasingly popular, with more than half (56 per cent) of software purchases in the next year expected to fall into this category.
This is according to the fifth annual Future of Open Source survey, conducted by North Bridge Venture Partners and the 451 Group.
The figures were revealed at the Open Source Business Conference, along with the fact that lower software costs are still very important to purchases.
However, the number one reason why people are coming to value open source software is the fact that it protects them from the traditional vendor lock-in and emerging proprietary cloud providers, such as Google and Microsoft Azure.
Software as a Service (SaaS), private cloud, public cloud, big data and mobile are driving much of the growth in open source, the authors of the report noted.
Michael Skok, managing partner of the venture capital firm, added: "Open source has gone mainstream and is in very high growth, first in mobile and in database."