Bringing Open Source Software to the Desktop : An In-Depth Study of the Implementation and use of Star Office

Open Source software is coming to the attention of individuals, organisations, and governments worldwide, and is increasingly being adopted by firms for specific business purposes. However, the uptake of end-user desktop OSS applications to date has been modest, and Microsoft products remain the de-facto standard on the corporate desktop. This brings into sharp focus one of the most challenging questions faced by the Open Source community today ... namely, if organisations value low acquisition costs, low total cost of ownership of software, potentially plentiful support, free access to source code, and the wish to avoid proprietary software vendor lock-in, why have more organisations not adopted OSS? This paper contributes to the existing research by reporting on an in-depth, interpretive, processual study of an attempt by a large Irish Trade Union to replace Microsoft Office with an Open Source alternative, StarOffice.