Högskolan i Skövde

Open Source (OS) is a phenomenon of increasing significance for organizations, offering the prospect of effective alternative business solutions and new business opportunities. A number of surveys have been conducted in various countries with the purpose of understanding the state of practice with respect to OS in companies. In this paper we report on a study of the perceptions of OS and the uptake of OS products and development models in Swedish companies. The study used purposeful sampling of companies that have an expressed intererst in OS, and the survey was conducted using a set of pre-prepared questions. Its goal was to investigate the extent to which OS has influenced business thinking, as seen from the standpoint of stakeholders. We found that uptake is much higher than reported in earlier studies, but as with previous studies, activity is still concentrated in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). There is increased evidence of interest beyond the simple use of OS components at the infrastructure level. Further, a significant proportion of the companies studied are supporting the OS community as well as benefiting from it. Support includes participation in existing projects and the release of new software under OS licenses. 

This paper reports from a study investigating distributed development in an intra-national and intra-organisational company context. The study gives an insight into issues related to, and strategies for successful distributed development seen in a project at Ericsson Microwave Systems. We conclude that regular, informal communication is the single most important factor for success in the project, with important roles in improving motivation and coordination. The leader's role in setting clear and transparent project priorities, and the use of iterative development methods with regular deliverables between sites, are identified as key elements of success. The context of the study is a relatively undemanding but common distributed development context, and the issues raised and strategies found to be effective are likely to be relevant to broader distributed development enterprises.

There are many different ways in which Open Source ideas can be adopted by business, and influence the way in which companies do business. A number of different surveys have been conducted in different countries with the purpose of understanding the state of practice with respect to Open Source in companies. A number of different business models have been observed, ranging from the use of Open Source infrastructure products to basing a company's entire business model on Open Source. In this paper we report on a study of the perceptions of Open Source and the uptake of open source products and development models in Swedish companies. We investigate this from the standpoint of stakeholders in those companies which have an expressed interest in Open Source, allowing a more in-depth analysis of the extent to which Open Source has influenced business thinking. From our analysis we find that uptake is much higher than reported in earlier studies, but is still concentrated in SMEs, consistent with the findings of previous studies. There is increased evidence of interest beyond,the simple use of OS components at the (LAMP) infrastructure level. In particular, a significant proportion of the companies are in a symbiotic relationship with the OS community, supporting both through participation in existing projects and the release of new software under OS licences.