By Falguni Bhuta

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

Open-source software’s transparent nature and low-cost will make it more popular among developing countries such as China and India (see India State: Linux In, MS Out). Marten Mickos, CEO of open-source database company MySQL, says the fast-growing BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) will be breeding grounds in 2007 for interesting open source startups because of the large market and talent. “China and India are so large together, like they have become the physical goods factories of the world, the same will happen with open source,” Mr. Allison says

More Linux-friendly hardware

Linux is already very popular in server rooms. To build on that success, hardware makers such as Dell and HP and chip makers such as AMD and Intel will build more servers and processors that will run Linux more easily, says Bruce Perens, vice president at open-source startup SourceLabs. Last August, for example, Intel released open source software that will give Linux full-fledged support for 3D graphics. Until then, Linux users had to use proprietary driver software to use graphics acceleration chips and hardware for improved graphics performance.

Vista flops in wake of open source competition

Open source advocates would like to believe that Vista, the new version of Microsoft Windows operating system, will fail to appeal to businesses and consumers because of its high cost, security issues, and closed nature (see Linux Faithful: Vista No Threat and Vista is Bad for You, FSF Says). “Vista won’t set the world on fire,” says open-source supporter Eric Raymond. “It will limp through 2007 looking lamer and lamer as it becomes evident that it’s not more than a glorified service pack, and one that completely fails to solve Microsoft’s security and reliability problems.”

More fun with intellectual property issues

The open-source industry will be rife with intellectual property issues in 2007, Mr. Perens of SourceLabs says. It all started with the SCO Group filing a lawsuit against IBM in 2003 claiming that Big Blue’s contributions to the Linux operating system violated UNIX patents owned by SCO. That lawsuit will continue into 2007. But Mr. Raymond says SCO won’t win anything against IBM. “In fact, I suspect IBM will sue to recover their legal costs—and win,” he says.