What is the general breakdown of worldwide and domestic revenue from
software sales by source and purchaser? I.e., proprietary vs.
open-source, and government vs. corporate vs. individual purchase?
Specifically, if detail is easily available, what is the world-wide
operating system market (PC vs. server, and for Windows, Unix, etc.
vs. Linux) and how much of that is government versus corporate versus
individual sales; what is the market share of suppliers; same for
desktop applications (non-game -- say, word processing) if available;
and, if possible, what is the estimated share of proprietary (esp.
MS/Windows and proprietary Unix) OS versus open-source (Linux) OS in
various markets (i.e., worldwide, geographic region, and
domestically).
Basically, I would like to understand in general, but informed, terms
the scope (in share and dollar terms) of the proprietary (esp. MS)
versus open-source/Linux debate, and, in particular, how the
government market(s) relate(s) to the commercial market and how the
markets differ by region (broadly) and worldwide. Trend data for the
last X? years would also be interesting. I am more interested in
relative orders of magnitude, percentage shares and trends than in
specific dollar amounts for individual vendors; but I would like some
understanding of the overall market size (in dollars) in each of the
categories and the potential $ impact of particular decisions relating
to open source in the news (for example, the Japan, Korea, China open
source initiative, Brazil, etc.).
My interest is policy related not commercial. I'm not looking for a
lot of original research. If you can answer this question then you
know what information I would like. Answer(s) can be link to
relevant paper or article. If not, please cite sources. Thanks. |
