KnowledgeTree, the Cape Town based open source document management system has taken off with a number of major customers. KnowledgeTree has also been listed on the Optaros Enterprise Open Source Directory, a listing of leading enterprise-ready open source applications.

A survey of 118 enterprise IT and development executives conducted by open source solution provider OpenLogic concludes that the "Open Core" model for open source licensing trails behind dual licensing and open source with commercial support, in terms of acceptability to the enterprise.

More good news for the open source community just in: an analysis of its enterprise customers by OpenLogic found that for 2007 as a whole, the use of open source among enterprise customers is up 26% year-on-year. Enterprises on average used a whopping 94 different open source packages last year, compared to 75 in 2006…

In articles past, we have examined both the up-and-coming open source projects to watch, and which open source applications you simply cannot live without. But where does this leave the enterprise user? Often times, the need of the enterprise user differs from that of the home-office/small-office worker.

Enterprise Open Source Directory, is billed as a one-stop information repository on some 300 enterprise-ready open-source applications that have been evaluated by Optaros for functionality, maturity, community support systems and popularity for business use.

Open source software is present in 85% of enterprises and the remainder expect to deploy it in the next year, according to research from Gartner. However, 69% of organizations don't have a formal policy for evaluating open source usage in their organizations, according to the Gartner survey. This opens up potential liabilities for intellectual property violations.

Open-source solutions used to be adopted quietly by company boffins who snuck in an Apache Web server or an open-source development tool suite under the philosophy "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission" (not to mention "It's easier to do it with open-source tools than to get an IT budget").

There are a vast number of fantastic open source projects out there, though for every one that is widely adopted, there are many that remain cloaked in relative obscurity. How can the open source development model best be leveraged to take advantage of community feedback, ideas, and testing, and ultimately gather code contributions?

During the current economic downturn, enterprises are increasingly adopting open source systems due to their significant cost advantages and their liberal license policies. Below are 10 questions you can ask to evaluate open source maturity.