Commercial adoption of open source software: an empirical study

There has been a dramatic increase in commercial interest in the potential of Open Source Software (OSS) over the past few years. However, given the many complex and novel issues that surround the use of OSS, the process of OSS adoption is not well-understood. We investigated this issue using a framework derived from innovation adoption theory which was then validated in an organisation which had embarked on a large-scale of adoption of OSS. The framework comprised four macrofactors – external environment, organisational context, technological context and individual factors. We then investigated these factors in a large-scale survey. Overall, the findings suggest a significant penetration of OSS with general deployment in two industry sectors –consultancy/software house and service/communication – and more limited deployment in government/public sector. However, the existence of a coherent and planned IT infrastructure based on proprietary software served to impede adoption of OSS. Finally, individualrelevant factors such as support for the general OSS ideology and committed personal championship of OSS were found to be significant.