Giancarlo Succi

Center for Applied Software Engineering

Free University of Bolzano/Bozen

Giancarlo.Succi@unibz.it

Should I adopt OpenOffice.org?

Koper/Capodistria, 30th September 2005

COSPA Project

COSPA members

4 Research Institutions

8 Public Administrations

2 Industry Organisations

More than 60 observer partners

Representing more than 19 European countries

Main objectives

The Consortium aims at analysing the effects of the introduction of Open Data Standards (ODS) and Open Source (OS) software for personal productivity and document management in European PAs.

Categorize and disseminate knowledge

Definition of viable paths for a successful transition

COSPA Research

TCO/ROI models for the PAs;

Pilot projects in partner Pas for the introduction of OSS

Cost and benefit analysis

Collection of data on the migration to OSS

PROM (PRO Metrics, process metrics): empirically compare the usage of proprietary and OS software

TCO Model

Total Cost of Ownership model

Concept introduced by Gartner group in 1987.

Widely applied

Some recent studies

Yankee Group Reports on Linux and Windows TCO comparison

The Framework

Provide a framework to evaluate the transition to OS software in Pas

Identify the cost metrics by using

TCO

GQM

Collect data and measures specific to the PA under analysis

Compute the TCO before and after the transition at the business process level.

Early results

Definition of a catalogue of OSS/ODS

Collection and scomposition of Business Processes of partner PAS

Definition of software requirements in partner PAs

Definition of a framework for the evaluation of the transition

Experimentation

Two phases:

OpenOffice.org on Windows

~3600 installations of OpenOffice.org

PROM installed to monitor usage

Questionnaires submitted to evaluate attitude towards OSS

OpenOffice.org on Linux

starting

Case one: SGV (1/2)

Case one: SGV (2/2)

May 2005

Usage of the Ooo
format

SXW-> OOo

DOC -> MS Office

DOC -> Ooo

113 municipalities

23 municipalities work
only with Ooo

65 work partially with
OOo

Case two: PROBZ (1/8)

Autonomous Province of Bozen-Bolzano

Case study refers to PROBZ as observer, 22 clients transition test phase

Now installing OOo on more than 3000 clients

Training

Support

Monitoring of usage of office automation applications

Case two: PROBZ (2/8)

OOo adoption

In blue the percentage of opened files using OpenOffice is represented and in orange the percentage of average time devoted to OpenOffice among users that effectively used OpenOffice.

Case two: PROBZ (3/8)

On attitude towards OSS

Question A:

Are you familiar with the expressions "Free Software" / "Open Source"?

(a) Very familiar, (b) Fairly familiar, (c) Sufficiently familiar, (d) Barely familiar, (e) Not familiar at all

Pre-Test

Post-Test

Case two: PROBZ (4/8)

Question B:

What is your perception of the expression "Free Software" / "Open Source" ?

(a) Negative, (b) Positive, (c) Neutral

Pre-Test

Post-Test

Case two: PROBZ (5/8)

Question C:

How much is important that the application you use is well-known and widely used?

(a) Very important, (b) Important, (c) Quite important,(d) Not very important, (e) Not important

Pre-Test

Post-Test

Case two: PROBZ (6/8)

Question D:

You are reluctant to give up the use of application software that you are used to in favor of an OSS alternative!

(a) Totally Agree, (b) Agree, (c) Neither, (d) Disagree, (e) Totally disagree

Pre-Test

Post-Test

Case two: PROBZ (7/8)

Question E:

Which motivations you have to use Open Source Software:

(a) You believe it is right to support OSS initiatives, (b) You find that today’s market dominance of a single software vendor is wrong, (c) Other, (d) I have no motivation to use Open Source Software

Pre-Test

Post-Test

Case two: PROBZ (8/8)

Has the attitude changed?

Obviously, all users know the term Open Source, after the experimentation.

Users now see OSS as either positive or negative (less neutral opinions).

They give more importance to the fact that the application is well-known.

Users remain open to a transition to OSS.

From additional questions, users migrated to OSS give more importance to the training phase.

Case three: PP (1/2)

OpenOffice.org - In blue the average number of documents per day and in red the average time.

Microsoft Office - In blue the average number of documents per day and in red the average time.

Case three: PP (2/2)

In general usage of OOo is 20-30% related to MS Office

Can be seen as a success

From what we have seen it is difficult to get a greater usage, given the current environment

It is necessary to gather more global transitions

Conclusions

Resistance to change seems one of the biggest issues

“brute-force” method (complete migration from the beginning) is not working

Conversion of documents requires time and can cause troubles (eg. macros)

Compatibility with old documents is of key importance

Trade-off of a user interface similar to MS Office (to ease users) and innovation

Some OOo concepts are not easily learned by users (eg. styles)

Question

Should all the products judged in terms of their performances or also by the process used to develop them

Note: I am not advocating lousy products

Thanks! 1/2

Thanks! 2/2

2004-05-04T10:05:26

Brian Fitzgerald