Developing a framework to adapt FOSS for IT companies in Sri Lanka

Abstract

With the introduction of intellectual property rights and copyright laws, most of the software consumers have been facing major issues with increased cost; due to purchase of expensive proprietary software. As an alternative, free and open source software (FOSS) has become increasingly popular around the world, particularly in the government sector. However, in Sri Lanka, most of the computer users are still reluctant to use the Open Source Operating Systems and Software, mainly due to lack of awareness and knowledge in this area. Low software costs, growing local software development industry and bridging the digital divide are the reason for FOSS to be seen as a viable option. As a matter of fact, IT companies have the option to reduce the IT Operational cost by 50%, by switching to FOSS. However, most of the IT sector employees and organizations are reluctant to switch to FOSS due to many disasters faced by some companies during the phase of transition. It is noted that various challenges and obstacles hamper the full FOSS implementation within the IT companies. The contribution of this research paper is on FOSS expansion framework, which is proposed as a possible solution to migrate existing Software environment to FOSS successfully. There are five specific objectives covered in this research: identify the most widely used operating systems and software in Sri Lankan IT sector, the reasons behind their wide applications, employee readiness for FOSS, create framework for migration to FOSS and test the framework. In order to create this framework we have extensively re-sorted primary and secondary data collection methods, including findings of prior literature reviews, by building up questionnaires and surveys focused on general IT sector as the target audience. The findings from the participants will be helpful in identifying the gaps between the resource base provided by the IT sector and the employees in respective IT companies. By doing so, it would generate a transparent environment with an approach of rectifying possible deadlocks in FOSS migration.