Adopting Open Source Software: A Practical Guide (Paperback)

Government agencies and public organizations often consider adopting open source software (OSS) for reasons of transparency, cost, citizen access, and greater efficiency in communication and delivering services. Adopting Open Source Software offers five richly detailed real-world case studies of OSS adoption by public organizations. The authors analyze the cases and develop an overarching, conceptual framework to clarify the various enablers and inhibitors of OSS adoption in the public sector. The book provides a useful resource for policymakers, practitioners, and academics.The five cases of OSS adoption include a hospital in Ireland; an IT consortium serving all the municipalities of the province of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy; schools and public offices in the Extremadura region of Spain; the Massachusetts state government's open standards policy in the United States; and the ICT department of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. The book provides a comparative analysis of these cases around the issues of motivation, strategies, technologies, economic and social aspects, and the implications for theory and practice.

政府機構和公共組織通常考慮採用開源軟體（OSS）的原因包括透明度、成本、公民存取以及在溝通和提供服務方面的效率。《採用開源軟體》這本書提供了五個詳細的實際案例，介紹了公共組織採用OSS的情況。作者分析了這些案例，並建立了一個整體性的概念框架，以澄清公共部門採用OSS的各種促進因素和阻礙因素。這本書對於政策制定者、從業人員和學者來說是一個有用的資源。

這五個OSS採用案例包括愛爾蘭的一家醫院、義大利博爾扎諾省所有市政府的IT聯盟、西班牙埃斯特雷馬杜拉地區的學校和公共辦公室、美國麻薩諸塞州政府的開放標準政策，以及義大利眾議院的ICT部門。這本書對這些案例進行了比較分析，涉及動機、策略、技術、經濟和社會方面的問題，並對理論和實踐的影響進行了探討。