According to a recent IDC study, the market for open-source software has been accelerated by both the slow economy and increased acceptance from enterprise customers

The sluggish economy is contributing to commercial open source sales, but customers still rank interoperability with proprietary software and vendor viability among their top concerns, according to a new survey from the Open Solutions Alliance.

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?

When I talk to vendors, I can often tell how truly open source they are based on their response to the question: what has been the impact of the economy on your business? Those that still have a foot or more in the proprietary software world frequently say, ‘Well, times are tough, but we aren’t really seeing any impact.’

With the world economy in shambles many businesses are already battening down the hatches expecting rough seas ahead. IT budgets will shrink along with all other budgets, and maybe even more than other budgets.

Normally IT gets walloped in a recession, with new projects put on hold until the economy thaws. Take the 2001 recession, for example, which saw IT budgets that had been growing 12.9% per year shrink to a 2.8% growth. In such circumstances, enterprises have traditionally placed existing projects on life support while cutting off the air supply to new projects.

Whether the ailing economy is real or imagined, you might be looking for ways to shed some pounds off your bloated IT budget. You should seriously consider Linux and Open Source software to put your 2009 financial appetite on a diet. Here are 10 reasons to choose Linux in a bad economy and none of them have to do with the fact that Linux is free.

Red Hat's CEO Jim Whitehurst has good reason to be optimistic. In his first full year as CEO of the Linux vendor, Whitehurst, a former Delta Airlines executive, has managed to pilot Red Hat into growth territory despite the overall turbulence in the global economy.

The big story of 2009 was the economy. After the collapse of major financial institutions in the fall of 2008, people began looking for a silver lining in open source and Linux. Here are some highlights from the Linux world in 2009.