Adoption Of Free And Open Source Software Research Articles

Factors influencing the adoption of free and open-source software for electronic records management by municipalities in Gauteng Province, South Africa

The South African cabinet adopted policy recommendations from the Government Information Technology Officer's Council pertaining to Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS). Even though the South African Cabinet has shown support for the use of FOSS through the enactment of a policy, the adoption of open source software in electronic records management seems to be slow. Proprietary software continues to be adopted and used by most public institutions, including local and provincial municipalities in South Africa. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate factors that may influence the adoption and use of FOSS for electronic records management by South African municipalities. The study adopted a qualitative research approach to collect data from 10 purposively selected municipalities in Gauteng. Data were analysed and presented thematically to address the research question. The findings of this study suggest that municipalities in Gauteng are not adopting FOSS for electronic records management as expected. This study established that top management support, reliability, affordability of the software, inadequate capability, contracts with proprietary software providers, organisational culture and organisational support are some of the factors that contributed to the low uptake when it comes to the adoption of Free and Open-Source Software by the municipalities.

Infobuttons for Genomic Medicine: Requirements and Barriers.

The study aimed to understand potential barriers to the adoption of health information technology projects that are released as free and open source software (FOSS). We conducted a survey of research consortia participants engaged in genomic medicine implementation to assess perceived institutional barriers to the adoption of three systems: ClinGen electronic health record (EHR) Toolkit, DocUBuild, and MyResults.org. The survey included eight barriers from the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR), with additional barriers identified from a qualitative analysis of open-ended responses. We analyzed responses from 24 research consortia participants from 18 institutions. In total, 14 categories of perceived barriers were evaluated, which were consistent with other observed barriers to FOSS adoption. The most frequent perceived barriers included lack of adaptability of the system, lack of institutional priority to implement, lack of trialability, lack of advantage of alternative systems, and complexity. In addition to understanding potential barriers, we recommend some strategies to address them (where possible), including considerations for genomic medicine. Overall, FOSS developers need to ensure systems are easy to trial and implement and need to clearly articulate benefits of their systems, especially when alternatives exist. Institutional champions will remain a critical component to prioritizing genomic medicine projects.

Challenges of Implementing Free and Open Source Software (FOSS): Evidence from the Indian Educational Setting

<p class="3">The use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), a subset of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), can reduce the cost of purchasing software. Despite the benefit in the initial purchase price of software, deploying software requires total cost that goes beyond the initial purchase price. Total cost is a silent issue of FOSS and can only be evaluated in the particular environment in which it is adopted, in this case Kerala, India, fora state-level FOSS project called IT@School. This project is one of the largest deployments of free open source software FOSS-based ICT education in the world and impacts 6 million students and 200,000 teachers every year. This study analyzes the perception of 43 senior FOSS implementation project officials. It details how FOSS was introduced and reports on major challenges and how those challenges were overcome in a secondary educational setting in India. Email interviews, document analysis, and online case studies were used to collect the data. The lack of adequate resources to train the teachers was the single biggest challenge in the adoption of FOSS. The emerging strategies for efficient FOSS implementation could be used in other states in India and in other developing countries.</p>

Deployment of open source electronic content management software in national government departments in South Africa

Purpose – This paper aims to report the deployment of open source electronic content management software in national government departments in South Africa, with the view to raise awareness of the free and open source software (FOSS) policy. Many countries including South Africa have developed policies that encourage the deployment of free and open source software (FOSS). Design/methodology/approach – The paper opted for qualitative data collected through interviews with four chief information officers, five information technology (IT) officials, two records managers from government departments, one archivist from the National Archives of South Africa and one IT official from the State Information Technology Agency; these were selected purposively from national government departments. Furthermore, a free test trial of open source software, Alfresco Community Edition, was conducted for a 30-day period during September 2013. Alfresco was chosen as it is the preferred FOSS in government departments in South Africa. Findings – The key finding reveals that, in contrast with the FOSS policy, governmental bodies in South Africa preferred proprietary software over FOSS, as only one government department has migrated to FOSS. The reasons cited for the low uptake of open source electronic content management include the perceived lack of support for FOSS or short lifespan support which was confirmed through the trial test, as well as a lack of IT skills by records management practitioners who are responsible for implementation of electronic content management and hidden costs as the internal staff would spend time supporting, tailoring and enhancing the software. It is observed that failure to raise awareness and benefits of the FOSS policy in South Africa will curtail the document into a dull epistle. Research limitations/implications – Due to the chosen research approach and sampling method, the results were not generalised to the population. It is hoped that the study will stimulate further research interest and raise awareness in government departments with regard to FOSS policy implementation, especially in the area of electronic content management. Practical implications – The paper shows the difficulty in implementing a policy and putting it into practice without looking into its practical feasibility. Originality/value – This research attempts to bridge the gap and bring new elements by assessing the level of FOSS adoption in the area of electronic content management which is often ignored by the government and also less researched by scholars.

Investigating Factors Influencing the Adoption and Use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Tanzanian Higher Learning Institutions: Towards an Individual-Technology-Organizational-Environmental (ITOE) Framework

This paper is located within the global debates about adoption and use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in developing countries. From the Tanzanian Higher learning Institutions (HLIs), this paper investigates factors influencing the adoption and use of the FOSS. The rationale for the investigation stems from the notion that Tanzanian HLIs is yet to fully adopt and use FOSS, despite huge investments and efforts being made on ground. This is facilitated by the lack of clear FOSS adoption and use framework. The source of this data was a questionnaire which comprised of structured questions, using a five-point Likert Scale. The population sample for the study was all HLIs stakeholders in Tanzania. Participants included both public and private HLIs. The positive factors includes autonomy for code modifications, IT staffs and decision makers, organization awareness, trustworthiness of FOSS, licensing and scalability, collaboration and knowledge sharing, collaboration on international ICT, organization policy and good social economic policy. The negative influences that emerged included, Lack of proper plan, low confidence, lack of expertise, unfit for purpose, difficult to implement, lack of supporting software. Furthermore, this paper motivates other researchers to analyze why the adoption and use of Free and Open source software is still low to higher learning Institutions in East Africa even though there potential benefits that have been advocated in many previous studies. Finally the paper has proposed Individual-Technological-Organizational- Environmental (ITOE) framework for adoption and use of FOSS.

Free and Open Source Software Technology Adoption in the Sri Lankan Banking Industry

This research explores Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) adoption in the Sri Lankan banking sector. It produces two types of results, which are unique. One is an 8-level abstract model based on the criticality for the business, which represents all the software application usage in Sri Lankan banks. Then it presents the adoption of FOSS in banks, in terms of two quantified indices, namely General FOSS Adoption Index and Category Specific FOSS Adoption Index. The first index modeled so that it represents the ‘strategic nature of usage of FOSS’ as well as the ‘FOSS friendliness’ within the bank. The second index represents the FOSS adoption in the bank, in terms of extraction of the ‘best technological features out of them’ and the ‘level of adoption’. The results reveal that the Sri Lankan banks do not have good levels of FOSS adoption, though all the banks use FOSS applications for some purpose or another. By further drill down into the model, it was discovered that the lack of government policy initiative towards FOSS has had a causal effect on the poor adoption ratings in the Sri Lankan banking context. Further it will greatly helpful to have FOSS supportive software business in the country, which will influence banks to get better service for FOSS products.

Adoption of free and open source software within high-velocity firms

Free and open source software (FOSS) solutions are not only considered to be a disruptive force in the proprietary software industry but have helped firms deliver efficient and proficient processes and position themselves in global supply networks. The purpose of this study was to conduct an investigation of FOSS adoption in firms operating in high-velocity environments and identify factors that have an impact on the adoption process. Primary data were gathered from a cluster of firms operating in a high-velocity environment. The results provide an insight about the FOSS adoption process to both practitioners and academics alike. Our results indicate that performance attitude of managers, data regulation and facilitating conditions are important determinants of a firm's behavioural intention (BI) to adopt and use FOSS. Interestingly, influences from social and organisational domains have little effect on a firm's BI to adopt FOSS solutions. Overall, the article provides a structure to FOSS adoption which is relevant to managers and academics.

A Multi-repository Approach to Study the Topology of Open Source Bugs Communities: Implications for Software and Code Quality

 Abstract—Businesses and research establishments are increasingly turning to Free and Open Source software (FOSS) as a means to lower software development, acquisition, and deployment costs. However, software quality and security remains key stumbling blocks to full scale FOSS adoption and deployment. Yet improvement in the quality and security of FOSS depends on the rate at which a community of volunteers report and fix bugs. The aim of this research is to understand the community governance of the bug reporting and fixing process. We link data obtained from bug tracking systems, source code repositories, and mailing lists and applied various metrics to investigate the dynamics of bug communities in 285 projects. The results of our study show that the identity of bug reporters or fixers, the size of the bug community and code are key factors in ensuring quality software. The implications of these findings for bugs governance, software and code quality, empirical research difficulties, and future research directions are also discussed.

Free and Open Source Software in developing contexts

PurposeOriginating in the USA and Northern Europe, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) found on the internet its fertile environment. In more recent years, FOSS is becoming an increasingly important element in strategies for development and implementation of information and communication technologies also in developing countries. Mainstream research on FOSS has catered to the underlying principles or freedom, open organizational forms, and on its economical aspects. The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on the actual consequences of FOSS, often left in the background.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines where FOSS principles' assumptions are likely to be more evident: in contexts of developing countries, which are geographically and organizationally far from the original environment of FOSS. A mixed methodology characterizes this work: quantitative and qualitative methods bring readers' attention to unusual empirical settings and downplayed organizational processes of information technology (IT) implementation and adoption.FindingsThe consequences of FOSS on IT implementation and actual use are ambivalent. It is argued that FOSS adoption does not happen spontaneously, neither by decree, and that the relevance of open technologies as public goods remains in the different role of local actual technical and organizational capabilities, and environment conditions.Originality/valueSuch a focus complements existing studies on the economical relevance of FOSS, which are not the focus of this paper.