[via InformationWeek]

Six interesting learnings about the usage of Open Source components in big companies.

1. Most large, multi-billion-dollar companies don’t know how much open source they’re actually using. It’s introduced into the IT environment by developers looking to build the best applications in the shortest amount of time possible.
2. Most companies don’t have a budget, per se, for open source. Open source is often used to help launch side projects that otherwise would stay on the shelf because there isn’t enough IT money to go around.
3. Open source is responsible for changing the character of large IT operations even more than it is changing the composition of these operations. […] Perhaps the greatest driver of open source adoption is that programmers like it.
4. There seems to be a consensus among large companies that open-source is a superior model for avoiding per-CPU software licensing fees that quickly add up in the data center.
5. There’s an awful lot of the open-source JBoss application server and MySQL database being used by large companies. […] One of the reasons open source has been successful, particularly in large businesses that have already made significant IT investments, is that companies can pick and choose the pieces they want to use, Fleury [CEO of JBoss] pointed out, adding, “A mark of the success of open source is that it’s modular by design.”
6. Big companies don’t want to get pinched by intellectual-property lawsuits over open source. […] Essentially JBoss will replace any code found to be in violation of intellectual-property rights.