Application of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) in estimating importance of Open Source Software (OSS) user acceptance factors

Akre, VL; Arif, M; Rizvi, A

Abstract

Open Source Software (OSS) is a phenomenon that has caused turbulence in
the smooth sail of the Software Development Bandwagon. The OSS movement
was initiated by special interest groups of hackers and developers who
perceived the closed source trade of proprietary software as a corporate
controlled restrain on the freedom of scientific process. Making the source
code of the software available to all users defined their main philosophy of
scientific freedom. Such independent factions regrouped to initiate the
revolutionary Free Software Movement, spearheaded by an enterprising MIT
researcher Richard Stallman. Over the past few decades, thousands of Open
Source Communities have emerged globally to develop cutting edge software
solutions and many of them match eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder to
analogous commercial software. Many researchers have published realms of
information on OSS topics such as - OSS acceptance by Public and Private
Sectors, Developer motivations in development of OSS, Licensing issues in
OSS and Usability aspects on OSS etc. This paper is an attempt to provide
some perceptions on usability issues of OSS. Authors have conducted a
thorough Review of Literature in the same field to identify drivers and barriers
pertaining to usage parameters of OSS. These variables were used to design a
questionnaire and data were collected using traditional and web-based
surveys. On the basis of the collected data, statistical tools were used to
extract factors that concern the usability aspects of OSS. The Analytic
Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, pioneered by Thomas Saaty, was then used
to ascertain the relative importance of indicators and factors as well. On the
basis of this exercise, importance ranks were assigned to the OSS usability
indicators as well as the OSS usability factors. Though many research papers
have been published on OSS usability aspects but there have been few attempts
made to evaluate the relative significance of usability indicators and factors.
The importance of indicators highlighted in this research might be very useful
to OSS development communities to prioritize their development objectives
and put more emphasis on certain indicators that are perceived more
significant by users. OSS users can use these findings and results to evaluate
OSS products on the basis of the measurement of the indicators pertaining to
different comparable OSS and closed source options.

Citation

Akre, V., Arif, M., & Rizvi, A. (2014). Application of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) in estimating importance of Open Source Software (OSS) user acceptance factors. AIMS International journal of management, 8(3), 233-249

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2014
• Deposit Date: Aug 18, 2015
• Journal: AIMS International Journal of Management
• Print ISSN: 1939-7011
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 233-249
• Publisher URL: http://www.aims-international.org/aimsijm/8-3.asp
• Related Public URLs: http://www.aims-international.org/aimsijm/