The Implementation of Free Software in Firms: an Empirical Analysis

This article presents the findings of a research aimed at characterizing open source migration initiatives. Thirty experiences have been considered in total, ninety of them are Public Administrations and the rest are private firms, operating different industries in eight different countries. Open source migration projects have become a recent research topic, especially from the managerial perspective. To overcome the lack of theoretical models, an empirical approach relying on grounded theory has been adopted. This inductive approach allows theory building and hypothesis formulation. According to the results, migrating from proprietary into open source is dependent on contextual and organizational factors, as for example, the need of the change itself, the political support for the change, the access to IT resources, the organizational climate, the motivation of the human resources, and the leadership style for the project or the firm complexity. Besides, migration efforts imply strategic and organizational consequences that the organization must properly evaluate beforehand.