State of Open Source Usage: The Scarf Report 2023
Last year we published our first aggregated report on open source usage data on Scarf and since then we’ve been pleased to see Scarf data cited by others, whether discussing open source or advocating for it. This latest edition of The Scarf Report covers the quarterly numbers for Q4 2023, as well as 2023 in its entirety.
Last year we published our first aggregated report on open source usage data on Scarf and since then we’ve been pleased to see Scarf data cited by others, whether discussing open source or advocating for it. This latest edition of The Scarf Report covers the quarterly numbers for Q4 2023, as well as 2023 in its entirety.
Overall Open Source Usage in Q4 and 2023
Overall Open Source Software Usage - 2023
Q4 2023 saw a 176 million increase in OSS downloads compared to Q3 2023, a 40% increase. This was paired with an increase of 800,000 unique origins, (Scarf’s closest approximation of a unique downloader of software) compared to the previous quarter.
Over the course of 2023, Scarf tracked a total of 1.6 billion OSS downloads from 15.4 million unique origins. Monthly uniques roughly doubled from the start to end of the year.
Open Source Software Usage across Fortune 500 Companies
Enterprise Open Source Usage - Q4 2023
In the last quarter of 2023, top Fortune 500 companies heavily involved in open-source software included Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Cisco. In Q4 alone, we identified 470 organizations engaging with OSS through Scarf.
Enterprise Open Source Usage - 2023
A few companies that consistently ranked in the Top 10 for OSS usage throughout the year, we observed:
- Apple
- Cisco
- Oracle
- Microsoft
- Disney
- IBM
With 94% of the Fortune 500 seen interacting with open source software tracked with Scarf in Q4 2023, data from Scarf serves as compelling and concrete evidence that open source is critical to enterprises globally. This is also further evidence that Scarf and approaches like it can uncover commercial open source usage that would otherwise go unreported.
Regional Usage of Open Source Software
Open source usage is global, but looking at the geographical statistics of Scarf downloads continues to show interesting results and trends. Significant growth in certain regions can be attributed to a number of potential factors: increased traction of Scarf itself, increased regional traction of particular projects that use Scarf, or increase in regional popularity of open source as a whole.
Regional Open Source Usage - Q4 2023
Regional Open Source Growth - Q4 2023
Regional Open Source Growth - 2023
Open Source Usage in the Public Sector
Scarf data shows that governments around the world leverage open source for application development and day to day operations. All IP addresses are tagged with a `connection_type`, representing if the internet connection belongs to an ISP, a business, a hosting provider, an educational institution or a government organization. Analyzing the unique organizations on `government` connection types give a unique view into the public sector adoption of open source worldwide.
Public Sector Open Source Usage - 2023
Container Registries
While Scarf tracks downloads of various artifact types, the most popular kind of artifact container images. Container downloads on Scarf have surfaced the rapid rise to prominence of GitHub Container Registry, but Docker Hub remains the dominant container registry by a wide margin, still receiving twice as much volume of pulls on Scarf.
Container Registries Usage - Q4 2023
Over the course of the year, the share of artifacts pulled through Scarf from Docker Hub has continued to increase, with its share of pulls increasing 16% between the first and last quarter of the year.
Container Registries - Q4 2023
Our Takeaways
As large organizations in both the private and public sector increase their reliance on open source, opportunities for successful commercialization of open source software also becomes increasingly achievable. We are confident that this upward trajectory will foster innovation, growth, and expansion within the open source community.
State of Open Source Usage Q3 2023: The Scarf Report
In Q3 2023, the open source software (OSS) landscape showed significant growth and shifts in various aspects. Here are the key findings:
State of Open Source Usage Q2 2023: The Scarf Report
We are pleased to present our Q2 2023 quarterly report on open-source software adoption and growth, courtesy of data obtained from Scarf users. At present, Scarf is monitoring downloads for more than 2500 open-source software projects. These projects are backed by esteemed companies and organizations worldwide, including the CNCF, Apache Foundation, and Linux Foundation, among others. This second report of 2023 aims to showcase the changes and growth observed in the past two quarters.
State of Open Source Usage Q1 2023: The Scarf Report
The popularity of open source software is not in doubt, but little concrete public data exists beyond human-generated surveys on adoption usage. We analyzed over 240 million downloads in Q1 2023 looking for trends. Q1 2023 saw growth across the entire open source industry. However, this growth has been particularly notable in the enterprise sector, with many large companies incorporating open source software into their operations. In fact, recent data from the users of Scarf, a tool designed to measure the growth and usage of open source software, shows that open source usage in the enterprise sector has been booming. In this blog post, we will explore the state of open source usage in Q1 2023 and the data illustrating how open source is becoming an increasingly important part of enterprise operations.
