Towards a reference framework for open source software adoption

Nowadays, the use of Open Source Software (OSS) components has become a driver for the primary and secondary information technology (IT) sector, among other factors, by the openness and innovation benefits that can give to the organizations, regardless of its business model and activities' nature. Nevertheless, IT companies and organizations still face numerous difficulties and challenges when making the strategic move to OSS. OSS is aligned with new challenges, which mainly derive from the way OSS is produced and the culture and values of OSS communities. In fact, OSS adoption impacts far beyond technology, because it requires a change in the organizational culture and reshaping IT decision-makers mindset. Therefore, this research work proposes a framework to support OSS adopters (i.e., software-related organizations that develop software and/or offer services relate to software) to analyze and evaluate the impact of adopting OSS as part of their software products and/or services offered to their customers/users, mainly in terms of their software related activities.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

OSS integration issues and community support: an integrator perspective

The reuse and integration of Open Source Software (OSS) components provided by OSS communities is becoming an economical and strategic need for today’s organizations. The integration of OSS components provides many benefits, but also risks and challenges. One of the most important risks is the lack of effective and timely OSS community support for dealing with possible integration problems. For gaining an understanding of the common problems that organizations face when integrating OSS components, and the role played by OSS communities, we performed an exploratory study on 25 OSS integration projects from different European organizations. The results show that the main way of reducing integration problems was the use of OSS components from well-established communities; therefore very few integration problems were identified. In most of the cases these problems were successfully solved with the support from the OSS community and/or colleagues. In addition, contrary to the common belief that understanding code from someone else is a hard and undesirable task, some integrators consider OSS code even more understandable than their own code.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Selection of third party software in Off-The-Shelf-based software development: an interview study with industrial practitioners

The success of software development using third party components highly depends on the ability to select a suitable component for the intended application. The evidence shows that there is limited knowledge about current industrial OTS selection practices. As a result, there is often a gap between theory and practice, and the proposed methods for supporting selection are rarely adopted in the industrial practice. This paper's goal is to investigate the actual industrial practice of component selection in order to provide an initial empirical basis that allows the reconciliation of research and industrial endeavors. The study consisted of semi-structured interviews with 23 employees from 20 different software-intensive companies that mostly develop web information system applications. It provides qualitative information that help to further understand these practices, and emphasize some aspects that have been overlooked by researchers. For instance, although the literature claims that component repositories are important for locating reusable components; these are hardly used in industrial practice. Instead, other resources that have not received considerable attention are used with this aim. Practices and potential market niches for software-intensive companies have been also identified. The results are valuable from both the research and the industrial perspectives as they provide a basis for formulating well-substantiated hypotheses and more effective improvement strategies.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Using bricolage to facilitate emergent collectives in SMEs

Starting a new business is often done in a realm of improvisation if resources are scarce and the business horizon is far from clear. Strategic improvisation occurs when the design of novel activities unite. We conducted an investigation of so called ‘emergent collectives’ in the context of a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME). Emergent collectives are networks of information nodes with minimal central control and largely controlled by a protocol specification where people can add nodes to the network and have a social incentive to do so. We considered here emergent collectives around an enterprise resources planning (ERP) software and a customer relation management (CRM) software in two open source software (OSS) communities. We investigated how the use of bricolage in the context of a start-up microenterprise can facilitate the adoption of an information system (IS) based on emergent collectives. Bricolage is an improvisational approach that allows learning form concrete experience. In our case study we followed the inception of a new business initiative up to the implementation of an IS, during a period of two years. The case study covers both the usefulness of bricolage for strategic improvisation and for entrepreneurial activity in a knowledge-intensive new business. We adopted an interpretative research strategy and used participatory action research to conduct our inquiry. Our findings lead to the suggestion that emergent collectives can be moulded into a usable set of IS resources applicable in a microenterprise. However the success depends heavily on the ICT managerial and technological capabilities of the CEO and his individual commitment to the process of bricolage. Our findings also show that open ERP and CRM software are not passing delusions. These emergent collectives will not take over proprietary ERP and CRM software all of a sudden, but clearly the rules of the game are slowly changing due to the introduction of new business models. The study contributes to the research of OSS as emergent collectives, bricolage and IS adoption in SMEs

The Knowledge Application and Utilization Framework Applied to Defense COTS: A Research Synthesis for Outsourced Innovation

Purpose -- Militaries of developing nations face increasing budget pressures, high operations tempo, a blitzing pace of technology, and adversaries that often meet or beat government capabilities using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies. The adoption of COTS products into defense acquisitions has been offered to help meet these challenges by essentially outsourcing new product development and innovation. This research summarizes extant research to develop a framework for managing the innovative and knowledge flows. Design/Methodology/Approach – A literature review of 62 sources was conducted with the objectives of identifying antecedents (barriers and facilitators) and consequences of COTS adoption. Findings – The DoD COTS literature predominantly consists of industry case studies, and there’s a strong need for further academically rigorous study. Extant rigorous research implicates the importance of the role of knowledge management to government innovative thinking that relies heavily on commercial suppliers. Research Limitations/Implications – Extant academically rigorous studies tend to depend on measures derived from work in information systems research, relying on user satisfaction as the outcome. Our findings indicate that user satisfaction has no relationship to COTS success; technically complex governmental purchases may be too distant from users or may have socio-economic goals that supersede user satisfaction. The knowledge acquisition and utilization framework worked well to explain the innovative process in COTS. Practical Implications – Where past research in the commercial context found technological knowledge to outweigh market knowledge in terms of importance, our research found the opposite. Managers either in government or marketing to government should be aware of the importance of market knowledge for defense COTS innovation, especially for commercial companies that work as system integrators. Originality/Value – From the literature emerged a framework of COTS product usage and a scale to measure COTS product appropriateness that should help to guide COTS product adoption decisions and to help manage COTS product implementations ex post

An analysis of the adoption of OSS by local public administrations: Evidence from the Emilia-Romagna Region of Italy

The wide diffusion of open source software (OSS) is driving discussion among scholars on a set of issues, including its adoption by public administrations (PA). Previous works only discussed one or a few factors that drive the decision to adopt OSS and did not addressed the potential benefits in terms of e-government that OSS may bring to PA. Our paper attempts to fill these gaps. The analysis is based on the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and studies the adoption of software (both proprietary and open source) by local PA. The results show there is increased adoption of OSS in several different domains of application, both servers and desktop clients. Among the motivations to adopt OSS, only dependence on software suppliers seems to be important. Its adoption also positively affects the variety and extent of interactivity of local public e-services.open source software; public administration; online public services; empirical research