Idealism vs. Pragmatism: Investigating the Organizational Adoption of Open Source Software

The underlying principles of the free software movement have always been idealistic or even political. The open source movement on the other hand, is more pragmatic in their attempts to promote open source software (OSS). Employees belonging to these movements often advocate the use of OSS in their organization. Hence, decision making in organizations on the adoption of OSS may exhibit certain idealistic characteristics. A recent study has shown that American organizations are quite pragmatic about the adoption decision on OSS. We investigate whether similar results will be obtained in circumstances in which there is more opportunity for idealistic behavior. Therefore, we have conducted ten case studies in Belgian organizations on the organizational adoption of OSS. Our results are largely consistent with previous studies, although some differences were discovered. Idealistic behavior with respect to the adoption of OSS only seems to manifest itself in very small organizations.