Open source developers take to the cloud

The cloud is becoming more popular with developers

As many as 40 per cent of developers working on open source projects plan to offer their applications as web services hosted by cloud providers, according to the latest figures from Evans Data.

The market research firm said that its latest survey of over 360 developers proves that the cloud is becoming ever more popular, with 28 per cent of developers interviewed saying they plan to employ Google's App Engine, and 15 per cent Amazon's cloud computing services.

Microsoft, IBM and Salesforce.com cloud services were also mentioned, but were by no means as popular as Google or Amazon.

The increasing costs of labour, datacentre resources and power are purportedly the reasons pushing firms rapidly in the direction of cloud computing.

"Many companies are using this model to not only reduce infrastructure costs, but simultaneously increase their computational capabilities," said Evans Data president and chief executive John Andrews.

Evans Data estimates that 30 per cent of open source applications are actually distributed through open source software portals, more than by any other means. However, the report also points out that those distributing their applications on mobile app stores are more likely to make money from them.

Other interesting claims made by the survey include the fact that 52 per cent of developers interviewed said they used Linux in a virtualised environment, and one in five purportedly use the Flex programming language at least occasionally.

MySQL remains the open source database of choice for at least 50 per cent of developers on at least some projects. Only 10 per cent admitted to using a relational database management system.

Evans Data's Open Source/Linux Development 2008 report covers a range of other topics, including the types of applications being created for servers and clients, the number of Linux apps in the pipeline for the coming year, and the major obstacles to Linux and open source software, such as security concerns and licensing issues.