[Dirk Riehle is] the author of The Economic Motivation of Open Source Software, a scholarly article that describes significant shifts in the software business. Datamation spoke with him about how these shifts are shaping the pay levels of open source developers.

One common misconception about open source software is that it can be changed by anyone and is less secure; however, most open source is strictly governed. For example, the Apache Software Foundation has tight configuration management controls for developers. Its products are so good that most major software vendors include some Apache software in their products including Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Sun.

The UK government has rejigged its open source and open standards software procurement policy, following pressure from OSS vendors last autumn. Early last year the Cabinet Office revised its rules on public sector open source software purchases, but many OSS players complained that the policy amendments didn’t go far enough.

With the current economic recession, open source software is a route that some enterprise developers are increasingly considering as a lower-cost alterative to proprietary solutions. However, one of the potential issues with open source software adoption is license compliance—ensuring that developers and enterprises are not in violation with a particular license.

One of the great things about the double-barrel open source software and fee-based subscription support strategy that commercial Linuxes have is that there is very little economic pressure on Linux shops to upgrade from one version of the platform to another as their Linux vendor (or vendors) tweak, change, upgrade, and improve their distros.

Hard economic times have resulted in good economic news for makers of open source PBXs. In a study released by the Eastern Management Group based on a survey of 6,000 IT executives, open source-based PBX products and overall solutions now account for 18% of the private branch market

In the last major economic downturn, Linux established itself as a widely-accepted enterprise operating system, benefiting a lively ecosystem of vendors such as Red Hat and Novell.

In the software ecology, a special type of evangelist works with organizations that are open to incorporating open source into their technology infrastructure. These “integrators” (sometimes called value-added resellers or just computer consultants) can encourage a business to adopt software because the integrator is a trusted outside party without a sales agenda.

It would be hard to deny that open source has changed enterprise computing in a big way. Right now however, it is mostly commercial vendors creating enterprise social software products. So, what’s next for Open Source in the enterprise?