Free/Open Source Software Adoption, Public Policies and Development Indicators: An International Comparison

Despite the growing body of research on inner workings of FOSS development, there are few studies on its relation with broader developments in society. In this study we have attempted a preliminary investigation of (1) how FOSS prevalence is related to economic and human development indicators of countries, (2) whether public policies regarding FOSS emerge in a consistent relation with these indicators in several clusters of countries constructed from the United Nation’s human development index, and (3)relation of software piracy to development indicators. Our results point to relative significance of noneconomic factors in FOSS adoption, lack of consistent policies among public agencies, and irrelevance of non-economic factors on software piracy.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: OSS
• Authors: Harald Schmidbauer, Mehmet Gençer, Vehbi Sinan Tunalioglu
• Keywords: Development Indicators, FOSS, FOSS Development, OSS 2007, Software Engineering