There is a consensus that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can play an important role in developing countries. However, in recent years, there has been an increasing agitation by sections of the society that softwares be freed from the control of the commercial developers. The adoption and use of open source software (OSS), especially in institutions of higher learning can play a fundamental responsibility in the formation of new knowledge, distribution and ultimate application of OSS in the economy and society as a whole. This study aimed at assessing the determinants of the adoption of open source software applications in universities. A survey research design was employed and both Primary and secondary sources of data were used. From the findings, most of the respondents seemed to have knowledge on OSS this is true because lately OSS has gained a reputation in terms reliability, efficiency, functionality, security that has amazed majority of consumers who are increasing by day. The findings indicated all variables under study, which were; Awareness, Perception of utilization, training and perceived usefulness had an effect on adoption. This effect was however 45.1% which means other factors influence adoption. It therefore recommended further research on these other factors.
Amant, K. S., & Still, B. (2007). Handbook of Research on Open Source Software: Technological, Economic, and Social Perspectives. Idea Group Inc (IGI).
Chau, P. Y. K., & Tam, K. Y. (1997). Factors Affecting the Adoption of Open Systems: An Exploratory Study. MIS Quarterly, 21(1), 1. doi:10.2307/249740
Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 319. doi:10.2307/249008
Davis, F. D., Bagozzi, R. P., & Warshaw, P. R. (1989). User Acceptance of Computer Technology: A Comparison of Two Theoretical Models. Management Science, 35(8), 982–1003. doi:10.1287/mnsc.35.8.982
Fitzgerald, B., & Kenny, T. (2003). Open Source Software the Trenches: Lessons from a Large-Scale OSS Implementation. In ICIS (pp. 316–326).
Grimshaw, D. J., & Talyarkhan, S. (2005). A best process approach for using ICTs in development. In IRFD World Forum on Information Society.
Kamau, J., & Namuye, S. (2012a). A Review of Users Adoption of Open Source Software in Africa. Computer and Information Science, 5(5), p45.
Kamau, J., & Namuye, S. (2012b). A Review of Users Adoption of Open Source Software in Africa. Computer and Information Science, 5(5), p45.
Larsen, M. H., Holck, J., & Pedersen, M. K. (2004). The Challenges of Open Source Software in IT Adoption.
Machado, C., & Thompson, D. K. (2005). The Adoption of Open Sources within Higher Education In Europe and A Dissemination Case Study ABSTRACT.
Mandal, S., Kandar, S., & Ray, P. (2011). Open Incremental Model A Open Source Software Development Life Cycle Model “OSDLC.” Retrieved from http://core.kmi.open.ac.uk/display/960627
Nichols, D. M., Thomson, K., & Yeates, S. A. (2001). Usability and open-source software development. In Proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Human Interaction (pp. 49–54). New York, NY, USA: ACM. doi:10.1145/2331812.2331822
Sobh, T. (2010). Innovations in Computing Sciences and Software Engineering. Springer.
Spinellis, D., & Giannikas, V. (2012). Organizational adoption of open source software. Journal of Systems and Software, 85(3), 666–682. doi:10.1016/j.jss.2011.09.037
St.Amant, K., & Still, B. (Eds.). (2007). Handbook of Research on Open Source Software. IGI Global. Retrieved from http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/evaluating-potential-free-open-source/21180
Tongia, R., Subrahmanian, E., & Arunachalam, V. S. (2005). Information and Communications Technology for Sustainable Development: Defining a Global Research Agenda. Allied Publishers.
Van Belle, J.-P., Brink, D., Roos, L., & Weller, J. (2006). Migrating to OSS-on-the-Desktop: Lessons learnt and a Proposed Model. In Proceedings of the 38th Southern Africa Computer Lectures Association Conference (pp. 120–134).
Copyright: © 2014 The Author(s)
Published by Human Resource Management Academic Research Society (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
