Use Of Free Open Source Software By Indian Organisations A Preliminary Study And Its Findings

Abstract

Growth in the use and adoption of Free Open Source Software newlineFOSS across different sectors worldwide has reached a stage where newlinesystematic studies on this phenomenon by researchers have become quite newlinecommon especially in the countries of Europe and South America However newlinedespite there being clear indications of considerable spread of FOSS use in newlineIndia too there does not seem to exist any significant empirical studies newlinepublicly available on the diffusion of FOSS in various sectors in India The newlinepresent work addresses this gap and is devoted to studying the nature and newlineextent of FOSS use and adoption in some classes of Indian orgainsations and newlineenterprises newlineThe concept and practice of FOSS its evolution and global status newlineare reviewed in the first chapter of this report along with a picture of the newlineFOSS scene in India Along with bringing out the significance and impact newlineFOSS is having on the SWIT industry worldwide and in India a strong case newlineis made on the need for quantitative assessment of the use and adoption of newlineFOSS by organisations and enterprises especially in countries like India newlinewhere the government is generally in favour of FOSS and its spread newlineSystematic studies already exist in the FOSS domain mostly newlinepertaining to FOSS technologies and products and with focus on their newlinemodeling and characterization from the businessreadiness and rating point of newlineview Studies also exist that rank countries in terms of their FOSSfriendliness newlineusing appropriate models and techniques These are analysed and newlinesummarized in the second chapter with a view to assist in building similar newlinemodels for FOSS adoption in Organisations which is the theme of the present newlinestudy newlineThe key conceptual contribution of the present work is that of newlinedefining the FOSS Adoption Index FAI for organisations and entities and newlinedeveloping a computational model for the same As per this model FAI of an newlineorganisation is a number in the range 0 to 10 obtained by feeding the FAI newlineModel with data collected from the orgainsation newline newline