Research on open source software has focused mainly on the motivations of open source programmers and the organization of open source projects [17] [19]. Some researchers portray open source as an extension of the earlier open systems movement [36]. While there has been some research on open-systems software adoption by corporate MIS organizations [4] the issue of open source adoption has received little attention.
We use a series of interviews with MIS managers to develop a grounded theory of open source platform adoption. We contrast this to prior academic and popular reports about the adoption of open source.