Linux获得开源领域75%风险投资

　　日前，从一份哈佛商学院的报告中我们得知，在开源领域，Linux获得了大约75%的风险投资。这份报告同时还指出，

　　在这份报告中指出，在1995-2005间，整个风险基金市场上，大概有20亿美金投入了开源软件市场，和Linux相关的产业获得了15亿，和Firefox相关的获得了3亿多，7600万左右的风险资金投入了OpenOffice的开源开发和推广，剩下还有大概4800万左右的资金用于资助MySQL数据库产品。

　　另外还获得数额不菲风险投资的开源项目有：PHP脚本语言相关项目大概获得了2400万，TCL脚本语言相关项目获得1500万美元，JBoss中间件项目也获得了1000万美元的资助。

　　从2005年起，又有更多的风险投资进入了这个领域，特别是以Eclipse为代表。但是投资的目的都是非常明显，那就是获得高额的回报。所投资的项目大多数是商业产品的替代品或者补充，这些在相关业内观察人士的预料范围之内。

　　为了计算投资等级，研究人员不仅仅要看直接的经济因素，比如投资额度和风险基金本身的等级，还要看被投资项目的影响力、未来发展前途、用户贡献度、开发人员贡献时间和贡献代码的数量等等。

　　报告还提到了一种新的评估开源软件项目影响力的指数系统，通过安装开源软件的字节数来计算。然后得出了下面的一个排行榜：

　　Linux：204 TB/周

　　OpenOffice：27/周

　　MySQL：15周

　　Firefox：12/周

　　JBoss：3/周

　　The Linux operating system is the recipient of 75% of all vendor investment in open source software, according to a new report from the Harvard Business School, which also indicates that vendor support for open source is primarily motivated by boosting their proprietary offerings.

　　The preliminary draft report suggests that $2bn was invested by vendors in open source software between 1995 and 2005, with $1.5bn plowed into Linux, $317m into the Firefox browser, $76m into the OpenOffice.org productivity suite and $48m into the MySQL database.

　　The only other projects to receive significant vendor backing, according to the study, were the PHP scripting language with $24m, the Tcl scripting language with $15m, and the JBoss middleware stack with $10m.

　　Although numerous investments since 2005 would change the picture, and the Eclipse tools project appears to be a notable omission, the research indicates that the vast majority of vendor investment in open source has been placed in Linux, and that vendors are clearly looking for a return on their investments.

　　"If vendors were altruistically motivated to contribute to OSS projects, we would expect to see an even distribution of investments across projects," noted the reports authors: Marco Iansiti, professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, and Gregory Richards, managing director of Keystone Strategy Inc.

　　Their research indicates that most investments in open source software are driven by economic motives and are complementary to proprietary software, hardware and service portfolios, something that many industry watchers would have predicted to be the case.

　　To calculate the investment levels, the researchers looked at direct financial contributions and venture capital funding, as well as putting a value on developer hours for ongoing development and contributed code. Customer contributions, volunteer time, and investments from individuals and non-profit organizations were excluded.

　　The report also suggests a new metric for assessing the impact of an open source project by multiplying weekly distributions by the size of the installation file (representing problem complexity) to calculate the installation rate. Linux had an installation rate of 204 terabytes per week, OpenOffice.org 27, MySQL 15, Firefox 12, and JBoss 3.

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