There’s a lot of chatter going around that open source excels in recession environments. I’m a little on the fence about that claim... but what I’m interested in talking about today is whether open source benefits anyone looking for a job right now. In theory, if open source companies grow in a recession, they should also be hiring.

Lofty oil prices. Sub-prime mortgage woes. Financial companies (Citigroup, Etrade) stumbling badly. Ouch. Ouch. And Ouch. Whispers of a potential recession ahead continue. That made The VAR Guy wonder: If the U.S. heads into a recession soon, are open source companies better positioned to weather the storm than their closed source counterparts? Let’s take a look.

With the pressure of the recession bearing down on companies, several industry experts expect adoption of open source software to grow, as a result.

Is free and open source software (FOSS) a way to cut business costs? As concern about recession deepens, more and more companies are asking this question. The safest way to explore FOSS is one step at a time.

Dana Blankenhorn makes some good points in a post from today titled Open Source in a Time of Recession. One of the better points is that, despite the incredible turmoil in global markets and economies, we actually haven't met the official definition of a recession yet here in the U.S., which would be two consecutive quarters without economic growth.

MANY technology firms are floundering amid the recession. But many of the ones that offer services tied to open-source software—free programs written by volunteers who collaborate online—are boasting double-digit growth.

The challenging U.S. economic recession has hit just about every segment of our economy--so how's it been affecting open source software development projects and their contributors?

While the recession has battered many U.S. software companies, Red Hat — which has staked its future on open-source Linux software, virtualization and cloud computing — has flourished.

The recession is helping to drive home the fact that open source is enterprise-ready in a lot of areas. Flexible pricing and mature products make the once-exotic software ready for prime time.