Although “no license cost/overall cost reduction” remains the top reason for using open source, avoiding vendor lock-in increased by 68% year over year, according to the 2026 State of Open Source Report released by Perforce Software in collaboration with the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and the Eclipse Foundation.
Overall, the top reasons for using open source software include:
- No license cost, overall cost reduction – 61.84%
- To avoid vendor lock-in – 55.35%
- Open standards and interoperability – 45.49%
- Stable technology with community long-term support – 44.86%
- To reduce development or maintenance costs – 42.56%
- To improve development velocity – 39.62%
- To modernize technology stack – 39.41%
In terms of overall use and adoption, 98% of organizations either increased or maintained their OSS use in the past year, as 21.17% reported a significant increase in usage, 49.47% reported increased usage, and 48.64% said usage remained the same.
Other highlights noted in the free report include:
- Avoiding vendor lock-in is of greater concern in the EU and UK, where 63% of organizations cite it as a top reason for choosing OSS, compared with 51% in North America.
- 60% of respondents working for large enterprises (5,000+ employees) spend 50% or more of their time on maintenance and bug fixes.
- Keeping up with security updates and patches remains the greatest challenge across all organization sizes.
Learn more at Perforce OpenLogic.
