Identifying the Affecting Factors for Adoption of Open Source Software in it Community

摘要

Open Source Software (OSS) can be regarded as one of the most recent trends in the information technology society. The attractive features of OSS are the reliability and performance, in addition to the free availability of the source code. Not only, the desktop environment of OSS is similar to that of proprietary software solutions but rather exceeds in many features. However, there have been limited assessments or empirical studies carried out concerning the adoption of OSS by the individuals for their personal needs as well as the influential factors affecting the decision making process. The objectives of the current study are to determine the main factors affecting the adoption of OSS in the desktop environment, investigate the status of awareness regarding OSS in addition to investigate the status of OSS application usage extents within the IT community. The research methodology made use of a surveying approach as an empirical means of investigation, targeting the IT community. More than 340 questionnaires were completed and analyzed and the results showed that compatibility, quality, support as well as usability are the key factors affecting the adoption of OSS. The findings indicate that the operating system and the office suite environments are mainly dominated by the proprietary software packages whereas the OSS usage is still limited among the community. On the contrary, OSS internet browsers utilization is quite popular among the users. Moreover, the results shown that awareness issue playing a role in OSS usage.