The Organizational Adoption of Open Source Server Software by Belgian Organizations

Abstract. This study reports on five case studies in Belgian organiza-tions that currently use open source server software. Respondents were asked about their motivation to use open source server software. Our results indicate that the lower cost, high reliability and availability of ex-ternal support are the prime reasons why organizations use open source software. The often claimed advantage of open source software of having access to the source code was found relevant only for those organiza-tions who perform development based on open source software. Some factors that were found relevant in previous studies (such as the support of standards) were however deemed less important by the organizations in our sample