IoT report series: Open source in the Internet of Things - Sample Report

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Content About this report

Key take-aways from this report

CHAPTER 1: Open source is ubiquitous in IoT

CHAPTER 2: What is open source?

CHAPTER 3: Profiling open source developers

CHAPTER 4: The economics of open: is more

open always better?

Methodology

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10TH EDITION DEVELOPER ECONOMICS (Q4 2015)

21,000+ DEVELOPERS SURVEYED

3,700 IOT DEVELOPERS ANSWERED OPEN SOURCE QUESTIONS

150 COUNTRIES COVERED

5M+ IOT DEVELOPERS IN THE WORLD TODAY

Key questions that this report answers: How mainstream is open source in IoT? Is it just for hobbyists and idealists, or is there more to it than that?

Which developer demographics use open source and why?

How can I make sense of the hundreds of open source, open hardware, and open data licenses that are out there?

Should your project be open or closed? How can you use open source to achieve commercial success?




METHODOLOGY

Developer Economics 10th edition reached an impressive 21,000+ respondents from 150 countries around the world. As such, it is the most global research on mobile, desktop, IoT and cloud developers combined ever conducted. This report is based on a large-scale online developer survey designed, produced and carried out by VisionMobile over a period of six weeks between October and November 2015.

Respondents to the online survey came from over 150 countries, including major app and IoT development hotspots such as the US, China, India, Israel, UK and Russia and stretching all the way to Kenya, Brazil and Jordan. The geographic reach of this survey is truly reflective of the global scale of the developer economy. The online survey was translated into 11 languages (Russian, Vietnamese, Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, Portuguese, Japanese, French, Indonesian, Italian) and promoted by leading community and media partners within the app development and IoT industry.

Respondents were asked to self-identify as mobile, desktop, IoT or cloud developers, or a combination of those. Over 12,000 developers indicated involvement the Internet of Things, out of which 4,400 were asked detailed questions on their role as IoT developers. 3,700 of them answered specific questions about open source usage. This group is the basis of our analysis throughout this report. We consider everyone who is involved in the production cycle of an IoT project to be an IoT developer, whether or not they are writing code. This includes team leaders and other decision makers.

To eliminate the effect of regional sampling biases, we weighted the regional distribution across 8 regions by a factor that was

determined by the regional distribution and growth trends identified in our App Economy research. Each of the separate branches: mobile, desktop, IoT, and cloud, were weighted independently and then combined.

The survey gathered responses from developers across mobile, desktop, cloud, and IoT platforms, using everything from vi-written C to visual development tools to create native, and cross-platform, applications aimed at a wide variety of platforms.

To minimise the sampling bias for platform distribution across our outreach channels, we weighted the responses to derive a representative platform distribution. We compared the distribution across a number of different developer outreach channels and identified statistically significant channels that exhibited the lowest variability from the platform medians across our whole sample base. From these channels we excluded the channels of our research partners to eliminate sampling bias due to respondents recruited via these channels. We derived a representative platform distribution based on independent, statistically significant channels to derive a weighted platform distribution. Again, this was performed separately for each of mobile, IoT, desktop and cloud, using targeted vertical markets rather than platforms for IoT and cloud hosting providers for cloud.

As we have shown in our Developer Segmentation report, there is no average developer: Our outcome-based segmentation model of eight developer segments, shows that the choices and views of developers vary wildly according to their desired outcomes from their development activity. Hobbyists, who just want to have fun, and Explorers, who are learning and testing the market, think


very differently compared to professional developers like Hunters, who are after direct app revenues, and Product Extenders, who are using apps and digital services to promote their other products. We have therefore also weighed our results to minimize sampling bias for segment distribution across our

outreach channels to derive a representative developer segment distribution. By combining the regional, platform and developer segment weighting we were able to minimise sampling biases due to these factors. All results in the report are weighted by main platform (or market), region and developer segment.


FULL REPORT TABLE OF CONTENT

About this report ·········································································· 5

Key take-aways from this report ················································· 6

CHAPTER 1: Open source is ubiquitous in IoT ························· 8

On pragmatists and enthusiasts ··················································· 11

Use of open source is universal across all demographics;

contribution is not ······································································ 12

Why developers use open source ················································· 15

CHAPTER 2: What is open source? ··········································· 17

The roots of open source in IoT ·················································· 17

Licenses and legal tools - an overview ·········································· 20

CHAPTER 3: Profiling open source developers ························· 24

Users versus Contributors ··························································· 24

8 IoT developer segments ··························································· 25

Hardware versus software developers ··········································· 27

Regional differences ···································································· 28

When open source idealism meets commercial reality ·················· 29

CHAPTER 4: The economics of open: is more open always

better? ··························································································· 31

Methodology ················································································· 36


LIST OF GRAPHS & FIGURES

1. The Data Spectrum (source: the Open Data Institute)

2. Use of open source in the Internet of Things across the

development stack

3. Contribution to open source projects across the development

stack, and correlation with usage

4. Usage and contribution to open source, broken down by

revenue tier, developer experience, region, and motivational

segment

5. Developer motivations for using or contributing to open

source projects

6. Summary of the three definitions of open (for software,

hardware, and data)

7. Overview of three relevant types of intellectual property

rights, as they apply to open source software, hardware, and

data

8. Overview of the most important open source software,

hardware, and data licenses

9. Motivations to use open source, by users vs contributors

10. Motivations to use open source, by IoT developer segment

11. Motivations to use open source, by hardware vs software

developers

12. Motivations to use open source, by region

13. Motivations to use open source, by revenue tier

14. Economic advantages of using open source technology in

IoT

15. Overview of the winning recipe for commercial open source

projects


ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Stijn Schuermans Senior Business Analyst

You can reach Stijn at: [email protected] @stijnschuermans

Stijn has been the lead Internet of Things researcher in the VisionMobile team since 2012. He has authored over 20 reports and research notes on mobile and the Internet of Things. He focuses on understanding how technology becomes value-creating innovation, how business models affect market dynamics, and the consequences of this for corporate strategy. Stijn holds an engineering master degree and an MBA. He has over 10 years’ experience as an engineer, product manager, strategist and business analyst.

Michael Vakulenko Strategy Director

You can reach Michael at: [email protected] @mvakulenko

Michael has over 18 years’ experience in mobile and telecoms starting from working on first experimental 3G systems in Qualcomm. Later on Michael was part of several startups developing products in the areas of wireless, enterprise networking and mobile apps. At VisionMobile Michael works at the cross section of business models, economics and technology where he leads strategy practice for software-centric business models in mobile, Internet of Things and Connected Car.

Christina Voskoglou Director of Research and Operations

You can reach Christina at: [email protected] @ChristinaVoskog

Christina leads the analyst team and oversees all VisionMobile research and data projects (big or small!), from design to methodology, to analysis and insights generation. She is also behind VisionMobile’s outcome-based developer segmentation model, as well as the Developer Economics reports and DataBoard subscription services. While at VisionMobile, Christina has led data analysis, survey design and methodology for the ongoing Developer Economics research program, as well as several other primary research projects.


INTRODUCTION

For some, open source technology is a key driver of innovation; for others it is a scary animal which threatens to destroy profits and accepted business practice. In the April 2016 report “Open Source in the Internet of Things”, we examine the state of the art in how and why IoT developers use open source software, open source hardware, and open data.

The Developer Economics advantage

This report is part of our Developer Economics series - the leading research program on software developers and the app economy, tracking developer experiences across platforms, revenues, apps, languages, tools, APIs, segments, and regions.

Our Q4 2015 Developer Economics survey reached over 21,000 developers in 150 countries.The data from this survey, the largest research to date on IoT developers, give us a unique perspective at how the Internet of Things developer ecosystem is evolving. This research report delves into data on 3,700 IoT developers that told us about their open source habits.

The online survey was translated into 11 languages (Russian, Vietnamese, Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, Portuguese, Japanese, French, Indonesian, Italian) and promoted by leading community and media partners within the app development and IoT industry. We corrected for regional bias and segment distribution bias across our outreach channels. For more information about our methodology, please get in touch.

In the report

The report looks at the open source phenomenon in IoT from several angles. First, we report on the scale and enthusiasm with which IoT developers use open source technology, and contribute to open source projects, across several developer demographics. We also look at the motivation of developers: why are they using open source? Are most developers open source zealots, or do they have more pragmatic reasons for selecting this type of technology?

Secondly, we put the use of open source technology in the Internet of Things space in its historical context. This report also contains the first overview of open source licenses across software, hardware, and data - three elements that come together in IoT like nowhere else.

In the third chapter we dive deeper into the motivations of open source developers. We profile open source developers across several axes: users versus contributors, VisionMobile’s model of 8 motivation-based developer segments, hardware versus software developers, regions, and the maturity of the organisation that developers work for.

In the final chapter we ask ourselves whether more open is always better. Or in other words, how can companies create a successful commercial strategy around open source products.

In the following sections, you get a flavor of what to expect from our Open Source in the Internet of Things report with just a few of the key insights.


5 REASONS WHY DEVELOPERS CHOOSE OPEN SOURCE

Do the most vocal open source evangelists, advocating a superior, more free software society, also represent the majority? Or is there a large group of developers out there using open source for more pragmatic reasons; because it’s “free as in beer” perhaps, or to improve their own positions in the software food chain? We set out to answer exactly this question.

More than half of IoT developers (55%) cited ideology as one of their top-three reasons for using open source, making it the top motivation. This paints a picture of developers as idealists, actively thinking about and advocating for a better organisation of business practices.

Of course, there is a lot of pragmatism too. In the second tier of motivations, highlighted by 1 in 3 IoT developers, we find that developers use open source technology because they think of it as being superior: 35% of IoT developers believe it is the best technology due to constant community improvements, 32% appreciate the peer support. These results once again highlight just how important the community is for IoT developers.

Another second-tier motivation to use open source is more personal: 34% of IoT developers use open source to hone their own skills or to learn a new technology. Open source has a low barrier to entry, and it allows developers to investigate the inner workings of a technology. For example, unit tests included in open source projects often provide some of the best sample code for developers to learn from.

Sometimes the reason to use a certain technology is not hard calculation, but simply an emotional one. Choosing open source because it is exciting new technology (21%) completes our top 5.

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SOARING ENTHUSIASM FOR OPEN SOURCE

Every IoT developer is into open source. Well, almost. An amazing 91% of IoT developers will use open source in at least one part of their development stack. In other words, fewer than 1 in 10 IoT developers will never take up the open-source option. That number doesn’t even capture the sheer enthusiasm that developers feel for open source. Only 1 in 5 open source users is completely pragmatic when it comes to open source decisions, that is, they’d only use open source when it’s superior to proprietary alternatives. The other four fifths of open source users will use it whenever they can in at least one part of their development stack.

Another aspect of enthusiasm for open source technology is the degree to which developers contribute to open source projects. The areas with the most enthusiastic open source users also have the most contributors to open source projects. Across the different parts of the development stack between 32% and 39% of IoT developers contribute at least the occasional bugfix. 58% of IoT developers are open source contributors in at least one part of the stack.

Out of the contributors in each part of the stack, the group that only occasionally lends a hand (for example only bug fixes) is twice to thrice as big as the group of core contributors. Core contributions to open source projects come from 9% to 12% of IoT developers involved in each part of the stack. There is some variation across application areas when it comes to the level of enthusiasm to contribute. For example, even though there are a relative high number of contributors to open source frameworks, libraries, or components - 38% contributors on a base of 71% of developer who use open source in this area - the number of core contributors (9%) is among the lowest of all areas.

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IoT report series: Open source in the Internet of Things - Sample Report