Analysis of free and open source software adoption in Sri Lankan software companies

Abstract

Nowadays, most Sri Lankan software development organizations use Free/Open source software (FOSS) for desktop computers and servers. However there is no quantitative measure to discover the true situation. This research tries to quantify adoption of FOSS by Sri Lanka software development organizations using Free/Open source software Adoption Index (FAI). This research is based on data collected through a web-based questionnaire from 30 Sri Lankan software development organizations. This study formed a model with a different set of parameters to quantify desktop and server FOSS adoption. The FAI values for desktop and servers are in the range of 0 and 10. If the FAI value is higher for an organization, that means it has greater use of FOSS. After analyzing survey data the desktop and server FAI values for the respective organizations were determined. Desktop FOSS adoption varied from 1.41 to 7.63 while 20% of the organizations had an FAI greater than 6. Similar to desktop FOSS adoption, server FOSS adoption also varied from 1.52 to 7.92. However 50% of the organizations had an FAI more than 4. Furthermore, 30% of the organizations had an index value greater than 6. This research study also ascertained that the availability of a FOSS policy, FOSS documentation and FOSS certified employees have a major positive impact on the FAI.