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.

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.

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

I'm not sure who Gartner talks to when it puts together its famous "Hype Cycle" reports, but I'm finding it hard to believe that it talks with enterprises. I was recently reading through its "Hype Cycle for Open-Source Software, 2007" report, and was astounded to find out that I've been tricked by paying customers into believing that they were, well, paying.

This is a review of a relatively new resource, called Open Source in the Enterprise (OSIE) by Bernard Golden. The report's raison d'être is to help companies to decide if open source applications are right for their enterprise, and if so, how to implement it intelligently.

At least 80 percent of all commercial software products will include elements of open-source code by 2010, according to Mark Driver, vice president of research at Gartner.

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.

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.

In yet another attack on open source software usage around the world, a copyright-focused organization is claiming that use of open source software promotes piracy. With a new 498-page report (PDF) that repeatedly defies logic, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) argues that the office of the U.S.