Open source came out on strong in 2006.

Open-source web browser Firefox gained market share against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with more than 200 million downloads. OpenOffice.org, the open-source productivity suite, was used on desktops by more than 200 million people.

Open-source advocates are promising more to come in 2008. Here are some of the predictions open-source experts are making for the coming year.

Open source gains ground on the desktop

Consumers will get used to using more open-source applications on the desktop, says Jeremy Allison, a high-profile programmer at Novell who recently left for Google (see Open-Source Guru goes to Google). They are already using Firefox and OpenOffice and will start deploying the Linux operating system on their desktops in 2007, he said. While it is not certain if 2007 will be the year of Linux on the desktop, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said 2007 will see a large amount of innovation from developers for desktop Linux with new styles and features (see Linux: Ubuntu Founder on Microsoft “Challenge”).

More momentum in developing countries

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