Our good friends at North Bridge Venture Partners have just opened the 2010 Future of Open Source Survey, an annual look at the state of open source technology and business models, the driving factors in rising adoption of open source products and how the market for open-source software is evolving. Anyone who uses open-source software in the commercial world, whether as a user or vendor of open-source products, should participate in the survey and have their voice heard. Creator Michael Skok describes the background of the survey in this blog post:

Well over a decade ago, in my operating career, Open Source presented itself as a solution to a critical development deadline for one of my engineering teams. I was inspired. Little did I know at the time how significant a moment that was.

Shortly thereafter, upon entering the Venture world, I was determined to support Open Source Software development by seeking out and investing in the best and brightest potential people behind it.  And yet as I began that work, I quickly found a deep gulf between those who were driving the OSS  movement and those attempting to learn from and work with it.

So I arranged “The Great Open Source Debate” to bring this into focus. See pictures below of some of the OSS leaders and leading CIOs of the day. It was a fun start and further encouraged me to create an enduring program, and to literally open it up to the community at large.

Now 5 years later, North Bridge is once again proud to be sponsoring the 4th annual Future of Open Source survey in conjunction with InfoWorld, and with more than 25 leading OSS industry collaborators and thousands of participants.

As usual, the results of the survey will be presented at the Open Source Business Conference, held this year March 17-18 in San Francisco. The results are made available to the public: here are the results from the 2008 and 2009 surveys.

2010 Open Source Survey: Take the Survey