Survey on Adoption of Open Source Software in Non-profit Organisations

This online survey is being conducted for research at Napier University in Edinburgh. The aim of the survey is to investigate the factors influencing the adoption of open source software in non-profit organisations. Open source software is free software which can be downloaded from the Internet, often written by volunteers. It is made available with the source code (the original text form of the program) so that anyone can modify it for their own purposes. Examples include the Linux operating system and the Apache web server. In some areas open source software dominates – Apache has around 80% of the web server market for example. In other areas open source software has had less impact and commercial products still dominate, for instance word processing.

You do not need to be a user of open source software to take part in this survey – there are general questions on software use and views on software issues. Your views are valuable whether or not you use open source software: this will give a balanced view of the factors affecting decisions on whether or not to use open source software.

Your answers will be treated confidentially and will not be passed on to anyone else, and the name of your organisation will not appear in the results. Data will only be used for research purposes. Any questions you cannot answer, leave. This is not a test, the aim is to get your opinions, just answer as many questions as you can.

If you have any queries about this survey, please contact Guoli Zhang, email: g.zhang@napier.ac.uk or napier2020@yahoo.co.uk