Open source software has become a large, shared foundation for modern development. GitHub counted 518 million projects in 2024, while Linux Foundation surveys show that open source is used, contributed to, funded, and governed across organizations worldwide. The figures below distinguish platform activity, survey responses, estimates, and older security-study measurements.
Contents
- Scale and growth of open source activity
- Who uses and contributes
- Business value and organizational investment
- Technology areas and industry use
- Contributor motivations, time, and funding
- Security, maintenance, and supply-chain risk
Scale and growth of open source activity
GitHub’s Octoverse 2024 report provides a view of activity on one major development platform. It counted 518 million projects in 2024, an increase of 25% from the previous year. Developers also created 108 million new repositories during 2024 and made more than 5.2 billion contributions to projects on GitHub. These are platform measurements, not a census of every open source project worldwide.
The public and open source portion of that activity was also substantial. GitHub recorded nearly 1 billion contributions to public and open source repositories in 2024. About 1.4 million developers made their first open source contribution on GitHub during the year, indicating continued entry into open source participation even as the overall project base expanded.
| GitHub activity measure | 2024 figure | Change or context |
|---|---|---|
| Projects | 518 million | 25% year-over-year growth |
| New repositories | 108 million | Created during 2024 |
| Contributions to all projects | More than 5.2 billion | Platform-wide figure |
| Contributions to public and open source repositories | Nearly 1 billion | Included in the platform activity |
| First-time open source contributors | About 1.4 million | Developers making a first contribution |
Some of the fastest growth appeared in newer technology areas. GitHub had 137,000 public generative-AI projects in 2024, with 98% year-over-year growth. Contributions to generative-AI projects increased 59% in the same period. Jupyter Notebook usage increased 92% from the prior year and was more than 170% higher in 2024 than in 2022. JavaScript package consumption through npm rose 15% year over year in 2024. Together, these figures describe expanding activity in AI, data work, and software-package ecosystems; they do not mean that every project or contribution is equally active or maintained.
Who uses and contributes
The Open Source Software Developer Report 2024 surveyed 332 developers about their relationship with open source. Ninety-six percent said they consumed open source software. Forty-nine percent both consumed and contributed, while 47% consumed open source without contributing. The remaining 4% reported no open source involvement or another status. Because these percentages come from a defined survey sample, they describe the respondents rather than all developers.
The same 332 respondents associated open source with several organizational benefits. Eighty-eight percent agreed that open source helps their organization innovate faster. Eighty-one percent agreed that open source development leads to better code quality and security, and 84% agreed that community-driven open source resolves vulnerabilities faster. These are perceptions recorded in the survey, not independent tests of code quality, innovation speed, or vulnerability response.
A separate result from the 2024 Global Spotlight Insights Report covered 1,264 global respondents. Fifty-two percent said they contributed to open source projects. The different sample size and question context mean this result should not be combined directly with the 49% figure from the developer report.
Business value and organizational investment
Open source participation increasingly appears in organizational strategy. In the 2024 global survey, 68% of 1,264 respondents said their organization had an open source strategy or policy. Among 838 respondents, 64% reported higher business value from open source use than in the prior year. Among 728 respondents, 56% reported greater benefits from contributing to open source than in the prior year. The two value figures use different response counts, so they measure related but distinct groups.
The Linux Foundation’s 2024 open source funding study received responses from 501 organizations worldwide. Nearly 44% either had an open source program office or wanted to create one. Within the study, 24% of organizations reported consuming open source, 21% reported contributing to projects, 18% reported releasing open source projects, and 16% reported influencing projects through leadership or maintainer roles.
The study also shows why visibility can be difficult. Sixty-five percent of surveyed organizations knew where they contributed to open source, but only 38% had specific clarity about those contributions. That distinction matters for teams trying to understand ownership, maintenance obligations, and the software components that support products.
The median responding organization invested $520,600 in annual open source value, measured in 2023 U.S. dollars. The surveyed organizations represented $1.7 billion in annual open source investment, while the study estimated approximately $7.7 billion in annual investment across the open source ecosystem. The ecosystem figure is an estimate, not a directly counted total. Employee and contractor contribution labor represented 86% of the investment measured in the funding study, emphasizing that open source investment includes people and time as well as direct financial payments.
Technology areas and industry use
The 2024 global survey’s IT responses identify several areas where respondents saw open source having the greatest effect. Artificial intelligence and machine learning ranked first, with 50% identifying it as the area benefiting most from open source. Operating systems were selected by 33%, while cloud and container technologies were selected by 30%.
Use was broad across operational and development work. Operating systems were the greatest open source use in IT for 65% of respondents. Cloud and container technologies reached 62%, CI/CD reached 61%, DevOps/GitOps reached 55%, and web and application development reached 54%.
The contribution picture was slightly different from the use picture. Cloud and container technologies received the most IT open source contributions for 33% of respondents. CI/CD was the leading contribution area for 30%, while web and application development and operating systems each reached 28%.
| IT area | Greatest use | Most contributions | Benefit leader result |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI and machine learning | — | — | 50% |
| Operating systems | 65% | 28% | 33% |
| Cloud and containers | 62% | 33% | 30% |
| CI/CD | 61% | 30% | — |
| DevOps/GitOps | 55% | — | — |
| Web and application development | 54% | 28% | — |
The table compares separate survey questions: the percentages are not additive shares of one market. A high-use category is not necessarily the category receiving the greatest share of contributions, and the benefit results reflect respondent judgment.
Contributor motivations, time, and funding
Among 661 open source contributors surveyed in the 2024 global survey, learning and personal development was the most frequently reported motivation, cited by 72%. Sixty-nine percent cited involvement in a fascinating or regularly used project, and 58% cited working with peers and the community. These results show a mix of personal growth, project interest, and social connection rather than a single reason for contributing.
Time and compensation were important constraints. Sixty-three percent cited lack of time due to personal commitments as a challenge, while 34% cited lack of funding or compensation. Contributors spent an average of 9 hours per week on open source projects. Half of respondents said most of their contributions were unpaid, while 25% said employers funded their hours.
Employer support was not limited to paying for contribution time. Thirty-seven percent of surveyed companies employed open source maintainers, and 74% of those companies recognized substantial value in doing so. The figures describe survey responses and should not be read as a universal rate for all companies or maintainers.
Security, maintenance, and supply-chain risk
Open source scale also creates a large maintenance surface. Sonatype’s 2024 State of the Software Supply Chain executive summary estimated more than 6.6 trillion open source downloads in 2024. Its analysis covered data from more than 7 million open source projects and reported that open source code can comprise up to 90% of a modern software application. The download figure and the “up to” application-composition figure are estimates and should not be treated as exact counts for every ecosystem or application.
The Sonatype 2024 open source risk analysis reported that 95% of vulnerable downloaded open source releases already had a fix available in 2024. Earlier Sonatype research found that about 96% of vulnerable downloaded open source components had a newer non-vulnerable version available at download time. Availability of a fix does not show that every organization applied it.
Log4Shell illustrates the persistence of that gap. Nearly three years after Log4Shell, 13% of Log4j downloads were still vulnerable even though a non-breaking fixed version was available. This is a measurement of downloads in the cited report, not a claim that 13% of all deployed Log4j installations remained vulnerable.
Older security measurements provide additional context but cover an earlier period. The State of Open Source Security 2022 report analyzed 2018–2022 conditions and found that the average application in development contained 49 open source vulnerabilities and 80 direct dependencies in the 2022 security study. Average time to fix open source vulnerabilities increased from 49 days in 2018 to 110 days in 2021.
That study also found that 51% of organizations had no open source security policy. Among organizations without such a policy, 30% said no one on their team was responsible for open source security. Overall, 41% lacked high confidence in their open source software security. These are legacy findings from the 2018–2022 study period, so they should not be presented as current 2024 or 2026 measurements without newer evidence.