A recently published extensive study on the Economic Impact of Open Source Software on Innovation and the Competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Sector in the EU states:

Almost two-thirds of FLOSS software is still written by individuals; firms contribute about 15% and other institutions another 20%.

Europe is the leading region in terms of globally collaborating FLOSS software developers, and leads in terms of global project leaders […].

While the U.S. has the edge in terms of large FLOSS-related businesses, the greater individual contribution from Europe has led to an increasing number of globally successful European FLOSS small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The existing base of quality FLOSS applications with reasonable quality control and distribution would cost firms almost Euro 12 billion to reproduce internally.

This existing base of FLOSS software represents a lower bound of about 131 000 real person-years of effort that has been devoted exclusively by programmers.

Defined broadly, FLOSS-related services could reach a 32% share of all IT services by 2010, and the FLOSS-related share of the economy could reach 4% of European GDP by 2010.

FLOSS potentially saves industry over 36% in software R&D investment that can result in increased profits or be more usefully spent in further innovation.

The notional value of Europeâ??s investment in FLOSS software today is Euro 22 billion (36 billion in the US) representing 20.5% of total software investment (20% in the US).