Launched in February, the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) came together to help open-source application vendors make their products work better together and gain visibility among enterprise users.

2008 was an eventful, breakthrough year for many open source companies, and 2009 will be even more so, especially in terms of business purchasing patterns, software business model shifts, and enterprise software stack evolution.

Results of a recent poll show that the stagnant economy may be leading more organizations to adopt open-source software to save on licensing fees, according ot the Open Solutions Alliance. Customers also are concerned about interoperability between open-source software and Microsoft Windows.

The sluggish economy is contributing to commercial open source sales, but customers still rank interoperability with proprietary software and vendor viability among their top concerns, according to a new survey from the Open Solutions Alliance.

While open source business applications are gaining popularity, proprietary products are not yet being elbowed out the sales door. The reason, William Hurley, BMC Software's chief architect of open source strategy, believes is that many business people are more concerned with getting the job done than with who makes the tool.

There are a few good reasons why open source fans should support the Business Software Alliance. I've never made a secret of the fact that I dislike the Business Software Alliance (BSA). It's questionable statistics and its sweeping generalisations make for annoying reading at the best of times. But recently I've been thinking that perhaps open source advocates should get behind the BSA.

Since forming in 2007, the vendor-neutral nonprofit consortium Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) has been working toward raising the awareness of open source in enterprise through a combination of education and marketing. As the group prepares to enter the new year, the OSA announced today that a new leadership team is poised to take over.

The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) is no longer focused on just Free/open source software

"In an effort to promote more communication between open source users and vendors, the nonprofit Open Solutions Alliance, Inc. (OSA) is opening up its membership to customers."