It is all about what we have: A discriminant analysis of organizations' decision to adopt open source software

This research reasons that human capital, that is, knowledge, skills, experience, abilities, and capacities possessed by employees, plays a vital role in the adoption of open source software (OSS) by organizations. Based on the survey responses of 104 OSS-adopting organizations and 111 non-adopting organizations in China, a discriminant analysis of organizations' OSS adoption behaviors was conducted. The current findings support the argument that OSS-adopting organizations can be clearly distinguished from their non-adopting counterparts in terms of their availability of internal OSS human capital, accessibility to external OSS human capital, organizational size, IT department size, and criticality of IT operation. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.