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World desk5 min

The State of Global Open Source 2025: What Organizations Reported

The Linux Foundation’s 2025 survey found strong reported value in open source alongside less common formal strategies and automated security testing.
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The Linux Foundation Research report The State of Global Open Source 2025 describes a clear gap: surveyed organizations see open source as valuable and rely on it in important systems, but fewer report formal strategies, dedicated teams, or automated security testing. Its findings offer a view of respondent perceptions and practices—not a census of every organization or proof that any one practice causes better outcomes.

What is the World of Open Source Global 2025 report?

The State of Global Open Source 2025 is a Linux Foundation Research analysis of organizational responses to a 45-question survey conducted in May 2025, in partnership with Canonical. It examines how organizations use and contribute to open source software (OSS), the value they attribute to it, how they approach governance and security, and what support they expect in production. The Linux Foundation’s report listing provides access to the study.

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The report characterizes open source as core infrastructure, not merely supplementary tooling. Its executive summary says that organizations depend on OSS for critical systems while many lack governance and security frameworks to manage that dependency safely. That is the report’s interpretation of the findings; it should not be read as an independently measured risk score for all organizations.

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What did respondents say about open source’s value and governance?

In the survey, 83% of respondents said open source is valuable to their organization’s future, and 46% reported that its business value had increased over the prior year. The report also quotes Canonical VP Engineering Jon Seager, who said nearly 86% of respondents indicated that using open source improves productivity. That figure is an attributed survey finding in the report foreword, not a separate productivity experiment.

Formal organization was less widespread than reported value: 34% said their organization had a clear open source strategy, while 26% reported an Open Source Program Office (OSPO) or similar open source team. These figures describe reported arrangements, not the presence or quality of every governance activity. Governance may also be distributed across legal, security, engineering, and procurement teams rather than housed in a central OSPO.

What the governance gap means in practice

The results suggest a practical management question: who owns policy, license review, security assessment, contribution workflows, and budget for open source dependencies? A centralized OSPO can make ownership visible, but the report does not prescribe one universally best structure. A distributed model still needs clear accountability and repeatable processes if a company depends on components in production.

How did organizations evaluate open source security?

Among the reported actions, 44% said they checked a project’s community activity before adopting a component, compared with 31% who said they used automated security testing tools. The difference points to an evaluation gap: signs of project health were reported more often than automated testing. It does not show that community checks are ineffective or that every organization without automated tools has poor security.

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For teams deciding how to assess a dependency, community activity is one input, not a substitute for technical checks. A governance process can assign ownership for reviewing license and intellectual-property concerns, examining security findings, and deciding whether a component is suitable for its intended use. The survey reports practices and concerns; it does not test a particular assessment workflow.

What support did respondents expect for OSS in production?

For critical production issues, 71% of respondents expected a support-provider response in under 12 hours. Separately, 53% expected long-term support guarantees and 47% expected rapid security patching. These are reported expectations, not service-level commitments made by a particular provider.

Paid support was considered essential by 54% for mission-critical workloads, 43% for systems handling sensitive data, and 38% for regulated environments. Those categories can overlap: a workload may be critical, sensitive, and regulated at once. The report therefore describes respondents’ views about when support matters, rather than a market share or a recommendation to buy a specific service.

When community-only support may be enough

For a low-consequence system, a team with the skills and capacity to maintain its dependencies may choose community resources and internal support. The key question is whether the organization can meet its own incident response, maintenance, and security obligations without a contracted provider; the survey does not define a universal threshold.

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When paid support may be worth evaluating

Consider whether a production workload requires a predictable incident response, long-term maintenance, or timely security patches, particularly where downtime, sensitive data, or regulation raises the consequence of failure. Compare any provider’s actual coverage and commitments with those requirements. The report documents respondent expectations, not vendors’ current service terms or a product comparison. Canonical partnered on the report, and its foreword mentions Ubuntu Pro, but that mention is not an independent endorsement or a comparison against alternatives.

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What were the main barriers and investment priorities?

Respondents most often identified licensing or intellectual-property concerns (37%), lack of technical support (36%), and security concerns (33%) as barriers to OSS use. Because the survey included select-all-that-apply questions, these percentages need not add to 100%; an organization may face several barriers at once.

When asked about future OSS investment priorities, respondents most often selected sponsoring critical projects (44%), developer training (41%), and upstream contribution (39%). These priorities point to different ways organizations can support the ecosystem: direct project funding, building internal capability, and contributing improvements back to projects. The figures record stated priorities, not completed investments.

How was the survey conducted, and how should the results be read?

The study fielded 45 questions in May 2025. Of 1,790 candidates who started, 851 qualified and completed the survey; 939 did not finish or were screened out. Qualified respondents had to be at least somewhat familiar with OSS, identify as a real person willing to share their experience and perceptions, and represent an organization. Collection was stratified by region, company size, and organization type. The report gives a ±2.8% margin of error at a 90% confidence level for the qualified sample.

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That margin of error does not turn the qualified sample into a probability census of organizations worldwide. The results are best phrased as what surveyed respondents reported, rather than exact global rates of adoption or governance. Some questions included “Don’t know or not sure” responses; for selected analyses, excluding those answers changes the denominator. Percentages may also differ from 100% because of rounding or because respondents could select multiple answers.

The report is evidence about responses collected in 2025, not a measurement of 2026 adoption or current vendor terms. It also does not establish that formal governance causes higher business value, or that reported expectations translate into better production outcomes.

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