@article {1419,
	title = {Adoption of free/libre open source software in public organizations: factors of impac},
	journal = {Information Technology \& People},
	volume = {25},
	year = {2012},
	pages = {156-187},
	chapter = {156},
	abstract = {Purpose {\textendash} In this paper the authors aim to investigate the importance of factors for the adoption of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) in the public sector. They seek to evaluate how different factors impact during the initiation and implementation phases of the adoption process.

Design/methodology/approach {\textendash} The authors base the methodological approach on two exploratory case studies with a contrasting result logic. They build a multi-level framework grounded both on literature review, and feedback from stakeholders. They then apply the framework to two case studies to better frame the findings. They consider phases of adoption (initiation, implementation) and the levels of adoption (technological, organizational, environmental, individual).

Findings {\textendash} In the case studies, the authors found the importance of a strong and decision-centric management board to give the impulse for the initiation phase of the process. As perceived by the stakeholders, a strong governmental support is of paramount importance to increase the adoption at the public level, although in the case studies examined the initiation stage started from the impulse of a championing management. Both case studies passed the initiation phase successfully. Continuous employees{\textquoteright} training, organizational objectives consensus, and business process reengineering have been found important for the implementation phase. In the case study in which these factors were not in place, the implementation phase of adoption failed. Environmental factors {\textendash} although relevant for the initiation of the adoption process {\textendash} are less significant during the actual implementation of the adoption process, as the contrasting result logic from the case studies shows.

Research limitations/implications {\textendash} The study refers to two public organizations in a specific environmental setting. No causality among factors has been inferred. Quantitative objective data have been used to determine the success of adoption, for qualitative data multiple sources have been used when possible to limit threats to validity.

Practical implications {\textendash} The framework can be used by stakeholders in public organizations to better frame their adoption strategies and to compare results across institutions. Lessons learnt from the case studies can be useful to drive future adoptions of FLOSS.

Originality/value {\textendash} The framework combines phases of adoption and levels making it possible to frame the analysis of the case studies. It has been operationalized with a set of metrics, and with a protocol for the case studies to increase replicability value.},
	doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09593841211232677},
	url = {http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=17036351},
	author = {Rossi, Bruno and Russo, Barbara and Succi, Giancarlo}
}
@proceedings {1278,
	title = {Building Knowledge in Open Source Software Research in Six Years of Conferences},
	year = {2011},
	note = {RQ1. Is there any social network underlying the research production at the OSS conference series?
RQ2. What are the major streams of research proposed at the OSS conference series?},
	month = {10/2011},
	pages = {123-141},
	publisher = {Springer},
	abstract = {Since its origins, the diffusion of the OSS phenomenon and the information about it has been entrusted to the Internet and its virtual communities of developers. This public mass of data has attracted the interest of researchers and practitioners aiming at formalizing it into a body of knowledge. To this aim, in 2005, a new series of conferences on OSS started to collect and convey OSS knowledge to the research and industrial community. Our work mines articles of the OSS conference series to understand the process of knowledge grounding and the community surrounding it. As such, we propose a semi-automated approach for a systematic mapping study on these articles. We automatically build a map of cross-citations among all the papers of the conferences and then we manually inspect the resulting clusters to identify knowledge building blocks and their mutual relationships. We found that industry-related, quality assurance, and empirical studies often originate or maintain new streams of research.},
	keywords = {Cross-citations, flossmole cited, graph, literature review, network, research, Systematic Mapping Study},
	author = {Mulazzini, Fabio and Rossi, Bruno and Russo, Barbara and Steff, Maximilian}
}
@article {1420,
	title = {Path dependent stochastic models to detect planned and actual technology use: A case study of OpenOffice},
	journal = {Information and Software Technology},
	volume = {53},
	year = {2011},
	month = {11/2011},
	pages = {1209 - 1226},
	abstract = {Abstract
Context

Adopting IT innovation in organizations is a complex decision process driven by technical, social and economic issues. Thus, those organizations that decide to adopt innovation take a decision of uncertain success of implementation, as the actual use of a new technology might not be the one expected. The misalignment between planned and effective use of innovation is called assimilation gap.
Objective

This research aims at defining a quantitative instrument for measuring the assimilation gap and applying it to the case of the adoption of OSS.
Method

In this paper, we use the theory of path dependence and increasing returns of Arthur. In particular, we model the use of software applications (planned or actual) by stochastic processes defined by the daily amounts of files created with the applications. We quantify the assimilation gap by comparing the resulting models by measures of proximity.
Results

We apply and validate our method to a real case study of introduction of OpenOffice. We have found a gap between the planned and the effective use despite well-defined directives to use the new OS technology. These findings suggest a need of strategy re-calibration that takes into account environmental factors and individual attitudes.
Conclusions

The theory of path dependence is a valid instrument to model the assimilation gap provided information on strategy toward innovation and quantitative data on actual use are available.},
	keywords = {Actual use of technology, Path dependence, Technology adoption, Urn models},
	issn = {09505849},
	doi = {10.1016/j.infsof.2011.05.002},
	url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950584911001042},
	author = {Rossi, Bruno and Russo, Barbara and Succi, Giancarlo}
}
@inbook {springerlink:10.1007/978-3-642-13244-5_20,
	title = {Download Patterns and Releases in Open Source Software Projects: A Perfect Symbiosis?},
	booktitle = {Open Source Software: New Horizons},
	series = {IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology},
	volume = {319},
	year = {2010},
	note = {"We apply experimentally our method to the most downloaded projects of SourceForge{\textquoteright}s history crawled through the FLOSSMole repository."},
	pages = {252-267},
	publisher = {Springer Boston},
	organization = {Springer Boston},
	abstract = {Software usage by end-users is one of the factors used to evaluate the success of software projects. In the context of open source software, there is no single and non-controversial measure of usage, though. Still, one of the most used and readily available measure is data about projects downloads. Nevertheless, download counts and averages do not convey as much information as the patterns in the original downloads time series. In this research, we propose a method to increase the expressiveness of mere download rates by considering download patterns against software releases. We apply experimentally our method to the most downloaded projects of SourceForge{\textquoteright}s history crawled through the FLOSSMole repository. Findings show that projects with similar usage can have indeed different levels of sensitivity to releases, revealing different behaviors of users. Future research will develop further the pattern recognition approach to automatically categorize open source projects according to their download patterns.},
	keywords = {flossmole, oss2010, sourceforge},
	url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13244-5_20},
	author = {Rossi, Bruno and Russo, Barbara and Succi, Giancarlo},
	editor = {{\r A}gerfalk, P{\"a}r and Boldyreff, Cornelia and Gonz{\'a}lez-Barahona, Jes{\'u}s and Madey, Gregory and Noll, John}
}
@conference {577,
	title = {Analysis of Open Source Software Development Iterations by Means of Burst Detection Techniques},
	booktitle = {OSS2009: Open Source Ecosystems: Diverse Communities Interacting (IFIP 2.13)},
	series = {IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology },
	volume = {299/2009},
	year = {2009},
	month = {2009///},
	pages = {83 - 93},
	publisher = {Springer},
	organization = {Springer},
	chapter = {9},
	abstract = {A highly efficient bug fixing process and quick release cycles are considered key properties of the open source software development methodology. In this paper, we study the relation between code activities (such as lines of code added per commit), bug fixing activities, and software release dates in a subset of open source projects. To study the phenomenon, we gathered a large data set about the evolution of 5 major open source projects. We compared activities by means of a burst detection technique to discover temporal peaks in time-series. We found quick adaptation of issue tracking activities in proximity of releases, and a distribution of coding activities across releases. Results show the importance of the application type/domain for the evaluation of the development process.
},
	issn = {978-3-642-02031-5},
	doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02032-2_9},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Analysis\%20of\%20Open\%20Source\%20Software.pdf},
	author = {Rossi, Bruno and Russo, Barbara and Succi, Giancarlo}
}
@article {1347,
	title = {A Cost Model of Open Source Software Adoption},
	journal = {International Journal of Open Source Software and Processes},
	volume = {1},
	year = {2009},
	pages = {60 - 82},
	abstract = {A limited budget for IT may lock public bodies in obsolete inefficient solutions slowing down their process of innovation. Various actions of estimating, controlling, and reducing IT costs have been already performed at national and European levels and Open Source Software (OSS) has been often pointed as a promising alternative that may also render public services and the underlying business processes more transparent and accessible to citizens. In this chapter, we propose a model of cost of a migration to OSS as a decision making instrument that helps public bodies being autonomous and independent in the IT adoption. The model is empirically validated in the real daily operations of more than 3,500 users. If adopted systematically our model might be a powerful tool to support transformational government and to establish an empirical open knowledge base on the economic advantages of OSS on which to found future strategies of OSS adoption.},
	issn = {1942-3934},
	doi = {10.4018/jossp.2009070105},
	author = {Russo, Barbara and Succi, Giancarlo}
}
@conference {652,
	title = {Open Source Software and Open Data Standards as a form of Technology Adoption: a Case Study},
	booktitle = {OSS2007: Open Source Development, Adoption and Innovation (IFIP 2.13)},
	series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing },
	volume = {234/2007},
	year = {2007},
	month = {2007///},
	pages = {325 - 330},
	publisher = {Springer},
	organization = {Springer},
	chapter = {36},
	abstract = {The process of technology adoption has been studied for long time to give instruments to evaluate the best strategies to ease the introduction of technology. While the main research on Open Source Software focuses mainly on the development process, team collaboration and programmers{\textquoteright} motivations, very few studies consider Open Source Software in this context. In this paper, we provide an overview of literature on technology adoption that can be useful to relate the concepts. We then provide a case study with historical data about file generation and usage across time to evaluate the adoption of Open Source Software and Open Data Standards in the specific case provided.
},
	issn = {978-0-387-72485-0},
	doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72486-7_36},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/OSS\%20and\%20Open\%20Data\%20Standards.pdf},
	author = {Rossi, Bruno and Russo, Barbara and Succi, Giancarlo}
}
@conference {677,
	title = {A study on the introduction of Open Source Software in the Public Administration},
	booktitle = {OSS2006: Open Source Systems (IFIP 2.13)},
	series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing},
	year = {2006},
	pages = {165 - 171},
	publisher = {Springer},
	organization = {Springer},
	abstract = {This paper reports about a study on the introduction of Open Source Software (OSS) in a Public Administration located in Europe. The Public Administration examined has introduced OSS as a means to save on the license costs and to have a larger space for customisation purposes. The adoption of new software may have an impact on the employees{\textquoteright} productivity that need to be addressed.
In this article, we compare the usage of OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office. Data about the usual office activities performed by the users participating to the experimentation have been collected by means of an automated non-invasive data collection tool. The result of this study reports a similar usage pattern of both suites in terms of workload, but a different approach in using functionalities provided by each software. A further analysis on the life cycles of documents elaborated with the office suites seems to validate the similarities among the software solutions examined.
},
	doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/0-387-34226-5_16},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/A\%20study\%20on\%20the\%20introduction\%20of\%20OSS.pdf},
	author = {Rossi, Bruno and Russo, Barbara and Succi, Giancarlo}
}
@conference {732,
	title = {Defining the Total Cost of Ownership for the Transition to Open Source Systems},
	booktitle = {OSS2005: Open Source Systems },
	year = {2005},
	pages = {108-112},
	abstract = {This paper provides a a framework to evaluate the transition to a OSS software solution in terms of returns and losses in the context of Public Administrations. The ultimate goal of the framework is to identify costs that are not easy to trace or that are not usually collected like user acceptance. The framework has been conducted using a Total Cost of Ownership approach, which is the most frequently used model to conduct cost comparisons between two or more IT systems. The study further implements the Goal Question Metric paradigm to identify the cost metrics. The framework relies various methods to collect the data, including questionnaires with end-users, qualitative interviews with IT-managers and company balance sheets. An example of framework{\textquoteright}s use is provided.},
	url = {http://pascal.case.unibz.it/handle/2038/774},
	author = {Russo, Barbara and Braghin, Chiara and Gasperi, Paolo and Sillitti, Alberto and Succi, Giancarlo}
}
@conference {780,
	title = {Doctoral Symposium at OSS 2005},
	booktitle = {OSS2005: Open Source Systems },
	year = {2005},
	pages = {300},
	author = {Russo, Barbara}
}
@proceedings {1179,
	title = {Toward an Empirical Assessment of the Benefits of Open Source Software},
	year = {2003},
	pages = {117-120},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/117-120.pdf},
	author = {Russo, Barbara and Zuliani, P. and Succi, G.}
}
