I received Gartner e-mail this week marketing their up-coming open-source summit. The message contains gems that illuminate Gartner's perspective on open source and the larger IT world.

"The news over the past few years in open source establish it as the natural way to release software. If there’s anything else you can do to earn money–whether setting up a social environment like Second Life, putting up ads like Google, or selling hardware like Intel–you really need to search hard for a reason to keep software proprietary."

So today, I read that Gartner has finally jumped on the open source bandwagon. I honestly thought this was a hold over April Fools joke. Seriously.

For some reason, people still can't seem to get their heads around the idea that you can make money, big money, from FOSS (Free Software/Open Source). It's a pity that more of them couldn't have been in New York City this week for the O'Reilly Money:Tech conference.

Matt Asay at CNET directs readers to Glyn Moody's take on the Gartner Group's findings that 85% of enterprises are using open source software.

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.

Perhaps the biggest news in Gartner's latest "Top 10 Technologies" report is the absence of open source. Or perhaps its omnipresence.

In a few years' time, almost all businesses will use open source, according to Gartner; even though IT managers may be unaware of it, and prefer to talk about fashions such as software as a service.

Brian Prentice over at Gartner has posted an interesting blog article called "Open Source's Dying Narrative." While I don't quite get the title, it's an insightful piece about how open source has attracted attention and (gasp) money.