Last Thursday, IDC announced estimates that revenue from standalone open source software will reach $5.8 billion by 2011. In other words, according to Matt Lawton, program director of IDC's Open Source Software Business Models research program, the market is still immature ($1.8 billion in 2006) - and will see accelerated growth over the next five years.

I reached out to a number of CEOs who head up open source companies (or at least utilize a lot of open source in their technology) as well as some leading open source associations to get their reactions and insights regarding the IDC research... and what a great response I got! By the way, pardon any advertorials - there is some meat on these bones.

"The IDC numbers reflect a realization by the market that open source software is addressing the long-running frustrations customers have with proprietary software. A good part of the explosive (and non-stop) growth is due to the fact that the OSS model wasn't designed to help a single company, but rather an entire ecosystem: IT execs, CFOs, developers and end users. IDC calls this an immature market. Well, we've already seen the disruption this immature market has had not only on the software industry, but also on the industries it serves. Open source has the momentum of a freight train -- one I'm glad I'm on and not standing in front of like my proprietary competitors."

- Gerald Labie, CEO, Open-Xchange