Open source software use – what’s beyond the ‘gift economy’?

This paper attempts to determine what reasons users have for choosing open source software. Correspondence analysis was used to examine the relationship between the use of programmes from selected software groups and the declared reasons for their use consistent with those mentioned in the literature. To compare the results with the available literature, a breakdown of reasons in line with the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) theory was also applied. The results obtained confirmed that users are not only guided by the low cost of open source licensed programmes when choosing software, and that the declared reasons for use may differ from one software group to another.