ITweb reports that growth in the uptake of Linux and Free and Open Source Software is being accelerated by the current economic climate as SA government and businesses look to cut cost of their resource hungry IT departments.

On the same day MyBroadband reports on the steady progress of government’s Open Source implementation plan.

In 2008 Tectonic reported that ‘famously conservative’ IT analyst Gartner had revised its predictions on open source software to announce that by “2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises will use open source in direct or embedded forms”.

Gartner’s latest report, The State of Open Source 2008, illustrates that even “users who reject open source for technical, legal or business reasons might find themselves unintentionally using open source despite their opposition”. (PDF download here).

In February 2008 Gartner predicted that 80 percent of software will be built on open source by 2012. In April 2008 their prediction was raised to 90%.