Open Source on IBM Power in 2026: Take the Annual Community Survey

The LibrePower 2026 Annual Survey on open source for IBM Power is now open. If you work with AIX, IBM i, Linux on Power, or ppc64le — in any role, at any level — we want to know what you actually see from the field. Results go back to the whole community as a free public report.

Take the 2026 Survey →

Why your participation matters

The IBM Power community is relatively small compared to x86 and cloud-native ecosystems. Reliable, independent data is scarce — which makes it difficult for practitioners, vendors, and open-source project maintainers to prioritize improvements, justify investments, or benchmark progress over time.

Since launching the survey, LibrePower has collected responses from administrators, developers, architects, and consultants across multiple industries, helping build one of the largest independent datasets focused on open-source adoption in the IBM Power ecosystem. This survey helps maintain and extend that dataset — one of the few public resources focused specifically on open source on AIX, IBM i, and Linux on Power.

Why we run this survey every year

The IBM Power ecosystem has a persistent gap between how open source on the platform is described — in press releases, conference talks, and vendor documentation — and what practitioners actually encounter when they sit down to do the work.

LibrePower exists to close that gap. We’re independent — not IBM, not a Linux vendor, not selling anything. Every year we ask the people who actually run open source on AIX, maintain IBM i open-source packages, and build on Linux on Power (ppc64le) what they really see: what’s working, what’s broken, and what would make the biggest difference. Then we publish everything as a transparent report with raw counts and year-over-year benchmarks.

What this survey covers

You only see the sections relevant to your environment — a Linux engineer never sees AIX questions, and vice versa.

AIX open-source packages

The AIX Toolbox for Open Source Software has improved since the switch to dnf, but package freshness, security-update confidence, and the support model remain active concerns. We ask AIX administrators directly: what’s missing, what breaks, and would you run business-critical open-source workloads on AIX today?

IBM i open source (PASE / yum)

The IBM i open-source ecosystem has seen real momentum — RPM-based package management via ACS and yum, Python, Node.js, Git, and a growing community around modernization. The 2026 survey tracks how that momentum translates into real IBM i modernization work and where blockers remain.

Linux on Power — ppc64le

ppc64le is a first-class Linux architecture in theory. In practice, missing container images, CI gaps, Python wheel availability, and per-core licensing costs still create friction. We measure all of it — across Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu, and community distributions — with year-over-year benchmarks you can actually cite.

OpenPOWER, firmware, and ecosystem openness

How open is the Power ISA in practice? Can non-IBM actors realistically build and maintain systems today? We ask practitioners, not press releases.

Vendor and community trust

Which groups — IBM, Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, the OpenPOWER Foundation, independent maintainers — are doing the most useful work? Which need to improve? The trust matrix is one of the most-cited sections of every LibrePower report.

Who should take it

If open source on Power is anywhere in your job, this is for you. AIX administrator, IBM i developer, Linux on Power engineer, infrastructure architect, pre-sales consultant, IBM employee, Linux vendor engineer, researcher, or homelab user — every perspective makes the data richer. There is no wrong answer and no required seniority.

The survey is especially valuable from practitioners who sit in the middle — the people who get called at 2 a.m. when something breaks, who write the internal tickets that never become public blog posts, and who know the real answer to “can Power actually do that in production?” We want the unfiltered version.

What you get back

Everyone who completes the survey receives the full report delivered to their inbox one week before it goes public. The report includes:

• Package availability and freshness scores across AIX, IBM i, and ppc64le
• Open-source maturity ratings per layer, with year-over-year benchmarks
• Community trust scores for IBM, Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, and independent maintainers
• The real blockers for Linux on Power adoption in 2026
• Anonymized practitioner quotes — the things people say to colleagues, not vendors
• LibrePower’s own priority recommendations for the coming year

All data is published with the response count (N). No individual answer, name, or company is attributed without explicit permission. Privacy notice →

Take the 2026 Survey →

Share it with one colleague

The single most effective thing you can do after completing the survey is forward it to one person whose view you’d value — an AIX admin at a bank, an IBM i developer at a manufacturer, a ppc64le maintainer at an upstream project. The more diverse the respondent base, the more useful the data for everyone.

You can also follow LibrePower on LinkedIn for the report announcement and technical updates throughout the year.

Frequently asked questions