Organizations are turning to open source during the COVID-19 recession to do more with less. According to the third annual Managed Open Source Survey released by Tidelift, 42% of organizations report their application development budgets were cut while 44% state they are likely to use more open source.

More than two-thirds of organizations say saving time and money is the top reason to use more open source for application development during the downturn (68%), while increasing efficiency of application development and maintenance was cited by almost half of respondents (48%).

Yet using open source presents new challenges, which differs depending on company size. Large companies are often burdened by cumbersome open source approval processes, while also struggling to make good decisions about what components to use and how to identify and resolve security vulnerabilities.

Only 18% of organizations are extremely confident that their open source components are secure, up-to-date, and well maintained. Formal processes around open source management are on the rise, but it is still a free for all. Only 17% of organizations have a formal process for managing open source.

Also, more than four-fifths (83%) of respondents say their organization contributes to open source using at least one of six common methods.

The study also found the top three programming languages organizations rely on most are JavaScript, Python, and Java.