Open source offers multiple benefits over closed source software, particularly when it comes to development - but there was more support for open source among managers than among developers.
That was one of the findings of the Gitlab Global Developer Survey which took place over one month towards the end of 2017. Of the 5 300 software professionals from around the world who participated in the survey, only 1,5% of the respondents were from Africa; the majority were from Europe (46%) and North America (36%).
According to the Gitlab 2018 Global Developer Report, which was based on the results of the survey, the majority of respondents identified themselves as software developers or engineers working for small-to-medium-sized businesses in the hardware services and software-as-a-service industries. More than half the respondents were aged between 25 and 35. There was, however, significant participation from older respondents who were in managerial positions.
Given that in a perfect world, tolls help software teams work faster and automate more so they can focus on innovating and creating, one of the survey's objectives was to evaluate how software teams were responding to the proliferation of options and the every-changing technology landscape when it came to choosing, implementing and integrating the right tools for software development.
There was nearly total agreement from both developers and managers that using the best available tools was important, and a strong majority in each group claimed to have access to those tools.
Nevertheless, issues around tools made up three of the four top concerns for managers when asked about the challenges they face in supporting their investments in 2018; while developers appeared to be content with their tools.
Management respondents tended to have more of an optimistic perspective not only on the status of their team's overall satisfaction and productivity, but also on the benefits of open source tools.
The survey findings regarding the benefits of open source are probably not surprising given the fact that GitLab Inc, which conducted the survey and promoted the it via its social media channels and newsletter, is a company based on the open source GitLab project.
Nevertheless, some several interesting perspectives on open source were identified, not least of which was that 92% of respondents agreed that open source tools were important to software innovation and 84% said they preferred to use open source over closed or proprietary tools. Just more than half (53%) agreed that using open source tools was important to their engineering organisation, compared with 31% who were neutral and 16% who disagreed.
Asked about the benefits of open source over closed source, the majority of respondents (60%), maintained that open source tools were more secure (35% were neutral and 7% disagreed), could improve overall software quality, and streamline the development process (58%).
Interestingly, managers were nearly 20% more likely to say that using an open source tool was more important to their development organisation - a result which the report's authors said indicated that it was possible that issues around vendor lock-in was of more concern to managers than developers.
However, only 15% of respondents said that all their team's development tools were open source, with a further 45% saying that "most" of their team's development tools were open source.
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