A theory-grounded framework of Open Source Software adoption in SMEs

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in European Journal of Information Systems. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Macredie, RD and Mijinyawa, K (2011), "A theory-grounded framework of Open Source Software adoption in SMEs", European Journal of Informations Systems, 20(2), 237-250 is available online at: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejis/journal/v20/n2/abs/ejis201060a.html.The increasing popularity and use of Open Source Software (OSS) has led to significant interest from research communities and enterprise practitioners, notably in the small business sector where this type of software offers particular benefits given the financial and human capital constraints faced. However, there has been little focus on developing valid frameworks that enable critical evaluation and common understanding of factors influencing OSS adoption. This paper seeks to address this shortcoming by presenting a theory-grounded framework for exploring these factors and explaining their influence on OSS adoption, with the context of study being small- to medium-sized Information Technology (IT) businesses in the U.K. The framework has implications for this type of business – and, we will suggest, more widely – as a frame of reference for understanding, and as tool for evaluating benefits and challenges in, OSS adoption. It also offers researchers a structured way of investigating adoption issues and a base from which to develop models of OSS adoption. The study reported in this paper used the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour (DTPB) as a basis for the research propositions, with the aim of: (i) developing a framework of empirical factors that influence OSS adoption; and (ii) appraising it through case study evaluation with 10 U.K. Small- to medium-sized enterprises in the IT sector. The demonstration of the capabilities of the framework suggests that it is able to provide a reliable explanation of the complex and subjective factors that influence attitudes, subjective norms and control over the use of OSS. The paper further argues that the DTPB proved useful in this research area and that it can provide a variety of situation-specific insights related to factors that influence the adoption of OSS

Filthy Lucre? Innovative Communities, Identity, and Commercialization

Online communities play an increasingly important role in developing innovation. However, relatively little is known about the ways in which community affiliation influences how innovations and products generated in these communities are commercialized. By examining open source software (OSS) as an example of an innovation community and using both a quasi experiment and a longitudinal survey, I seek to shed light on this issue. In the quasi experiment, using the launch of the Apple App Store, I find a decreased propensity toward commercialization among individuals associated with online community innovation. I then examine the mechanisms for this decreased commercialization with a novel longitudinal survey of OSS community members. Despite the history of OSS as an anticommercial community, I do not find that anticommercial attitudes play a role in commercialization decisions. Instead, differences in entrepreneurial self-identity have large significant effects on the propensity to commercialize. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the literatures on both entrepreneurial identity and community innovation

Decoding the "Free/Open Source(F/OSS) Software Puzzle" a survey of theoretical and empirical contributions

F/OSS software has been described by many as a puzzle. In the past five years, it has stimulated the curiosity of scholars in a variety of fields, including economics, law, psychology, anthropology and computer science, so that the number of contributions on the subject has increased exponentially. The purpose of this paper is to provide a sufficiently comprehensive account of these contributions in order to draw some general conclusions on the state of our understanding of the phenomenon and identify directions for future research. The exercise suggests that what is puzzling about F/OSS is not so much the fact that people freely contribute to a good they make available to all, but rather the complexity of its institutional structure and its ability to organizationally evolve over time.F/OSS software, Innovation, Incentives, Governance, Intellectual Property Rights

OpenPerf: A Benchmarking Framework for the Sustainable Development of the Open-Source Ecosystem

Benchmarking involves designing scientific test methods, tools, and frameworks to quantitatively and comparably assess specific performance indicators of certain test subjects. With the development of artificial intelligence, AI benchmarking datasets such as ImageNet and DataPerf have gradually become consensus standards in both academic and industrial fields. However, constructing a benchmarking framework remains a significant challenge in the open-source domain due to the diverse range of data types, the wide array of research issues, and the intricate nature of collaboration networks. This paper introduces OpenPerf, a benchmarking framework designed for the sustainable development of the open-source ecosystem. This framework defines 9 task benchmarking tasks in the open-source research, encompassing 3 data types: time series, text, and graphics, and addresses 6 research problems including regression, classification, recommendation, ranking, network building, and anomaly detection. Based on the above tasks, we implemented 3 data science task benchmarks, 2 index-based benchmarks, and 1 standard benchmark. Notably, the index-based benchmarks have been adopted by the China Electronics Standardization Institute as evaluation criteria for open-source community governance. Additionally, we have developed a comprehensive toolkit for OpenPerf, which not only offers robust data management, tool integration, and user interface capabilities but also adopts a Benchmarking-as-a-Service (BaaS) model to serve academic institutions, industries, and foundations. Through its application in renowned companies and institutions such as Alibaba, Ant Group, and East China Normal University, we have validated OpenPerf's pivotal role in the healthy evolution of the open-source ecosystem

Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) for Market Analysis of FP7 CHOReOS Products

AbstractThe European 7th Framework FP7-ICT-2009-5 project CHOReOS No. 257178 (2010-2013) “Large Scale Choreographies for the Future Internet (IP)” is aimed to elaborate on new methods and tools related to Future Internet ultra-large-scale (ULS) solution development based on the use of choreographies. The purpose of this research is to identify exploitable CHOReOS products and approaches and business market trends that may exploit them. The aim is to collect and assess early market inputs, thereby ensuring that market needs are addressed properly by the CHOReOS project. The market acceptance assessment is done using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), but the credibility of results is assessed using Cronbach's Alpha, Split-Half Reliability and Spearman–Brown testing methods

Psychological and Agentic Effects of Human-Bot Delegation in Open-Source Software Development (OSSD) Communities: An Empirical Investigation of Information Systems Delegation Framework

Bots are agentic AI that automatically interact with software developers, also known as contributors, to coordinate work in open-source software development (OSSD). The proliferation of bots in OSSD communities like Kubernetes led them to become the disruptive new teammates central to the coordinating mechanisms for implementing source code changes using pull requests. These bots provide procedural rationality and enhance predictability in OSSD communities akin to clerks and managers in traditional organizations. However, despite acknowledging the criticality of the bots’ agentic role in coordinating the OSSD, research on the OSSD dynamics in the Information Systems literature has failed to reveal the role of bots on contributors’ behavioral outcomes. Bot-driven OSSD communities serve as an excellent example of successful new forms of organizing that necessitate theoretical modeling of the human-bot collaboration, the central mechanism, enhancing contribution patterns, and the overall sustainability of the OSSD community. Using 289 survey responses from Kubernetes contributors, we empirically tested the model and identified the factors enabling contributors’ fit appraisal of collaborating with the bots. Contributors appraised adaptive and reliable bots that offered explainable feedback. Our findings highlight the role of contributors’ self-efficacy and their instrumentality in the project as the predictors of their fit appraisal. More importantly, the empirical results revealed the role of agentic coordination as the enabler of contributors’ satisfaction via explicit and implicit coordination mechanisms. Furthermore, we find that contributors intend to continue contributing if satisfied with their contribution experience, leading to their commitment to the OSSD community. The model offers a more nuanced perspective of the human-bot collaboration in OSSD communities. A profound understanding of the dyadic delegation patterns, leading to contributor satisfaction, could inform researchers and practitioners in designing bots and OSSD platforms that ultimately enhance the contribution experiences, leading to their willingness to continue contributing to the OSSD community. Our results and discussion of findings offer actionable insights to enable bot design for optimal utilization in OSSD and other similar knowledge-intensive voluntary communities. The study findings offer implications for the future forms of organizing, the design of human-bot collaborative environments, and the sustainability and success of OSSD communities

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Open source technologies and local economic development: Exploring adoption factors in a Less Developed Country.

Abstract A rapidly growing body of research is investigating the role and the adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in alleviating poverty. Many of these studies have focused on ICT with proprietary software, however, careful academic studies have been devoted to the adoption of Free Open Source Software (FOSS), since it is recognized as unique opportunity for less economically developed countries (LEDCs). In fact, a lot of opportunities and challenges have been posed for developing countries by the dramatic growth of open source software. However, the problematic nature of FOSS adoption is readily evidenced in the fairly frequent reports of problems. With issues such as high level of poverty, illiteracy, poor health services and lack of ICT awareness, how can developing country policy makers and other key stakeholders make informed decisions about the benefits and implications of choosing open source solutions. To benefit from this opportunity, it is therefore important for all players to identify and understand the strategic factors and future trends that affect the development of an efficient FOSS industry in LEDCs. To reach this research purpose, we proposed a conceptual framework based on various literature reviews and examined it to find the effect of some of the technological, environmental, organizational, social and individual factors on FOSS adoption and use in SMEs industry in Ghana; then, future trends that are likely to impact the deployment and development of FOSS in the country were assessed. The methodology employed is a two-fold approach involving; quantitative method with structural equation model of partial least squares (SEM-PLS) and qualitative method using a combination of Delphi techniques and SWOT analysis. In the quantitative approach the results of study suggest that power distance cultural dimension and FOSS system compatibility and capabilities have positive influence on perceived usefulness of the software. Conversely, system complexity, government supports and awareness have negative influence on the perceived usefulness. However, perceived usefulness has no effect on users’ intention to adopt. In addition, FOSS quality and power distance cultural dimension have positive influence on perceived ease of use which in turn has significant effect on users’ intention to adopt. While government supports, education and awareness have negative influence on users’ intention to adopt, power distance cultural dimension, social identification and personal innovativeness in IT have positive effect. In summary, the obtained results from SEM-PLS revealed that related factors explained 86% of the variation of influencing factors on intention to adopt, which in turn explained 58% of variance of usage behavior. In the qualitative approach the result was based on the internal and external factors identified through the Delphi techniques iterations. Additionally, SWOT analysis was carried out to foresee an efficient software industry that could help to boost local economic development of the country. In fact, the result reveals significant strengths within Ghanaian SMEs but less opportunity for Ghana as a whole. In regard to this finding there is need for strong collaboration and partnership among government, universities and industry with policy suggestions that should be optimally implemented