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Well Documented Open Source Business Case?
PeteQC asks: "I'm currently working on a project and I need solid and well documented case studies about actual implementation of open source in an enterprise (failure or success). My goal is to use the grounded theory to build a scientific model on Open Source adoption. I've searched through the web, but the only good case I found was the Beaumont Hospital Case. (Which was also published in IEEE Software, January/February edition). I'd like to know if Slashdot knows of other well-documented case studies which I may use? I'm looking for a link to a web site or a reference to a specialized publication, but all assistance will be welcomed."
I recall hearing about the St. George UT area 911 services moving to OSS a while back with a bit of success. Google around for it. For reference St. George is at the bottom of UT, about an hour east of Vegas.
Slashdot members are not slaves you know...
Oh wait. Check with Linus
Of course you checked all the Linux magazines for success stories, right?
The PostgreSQL advocacy site has some case studies about its adoption. Most of them are pretty terse, but the PDF ones are more in-depth.
documentation of business cases that work for commercialising open source software.
Assuming software costs a business money to create and there is a desire to recoup those costs (and even a profit!) - there has to be more than just "Services revenue" - the software should be easy to install, after all , or "donate if you like it".
Its these sort of models that will help drive adoption - if you can make it profitable for companies to actually do this, then open source it.
I recall Newsforge doing stories on this city that made the switch. Here's the link. Newsforge and Linux.com are good places to look for this sort of thing. From a research perspective, you may be able to find stories, but you'll probably have to document them yourself.
There was a guy ball or something that got fined by Microsoft and threw out all M$ proucts. This is the major one I know of.
Pick some names from it and go hunting for more detail. OSIA has some other useful links.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...has case studies on Linux Terminal Server Project deployments in schools.
Not business case studies, but still might yield some useful results...
The Army reading list
Google is built on Linux, Amazon is built on linux, Yahoo is built on FreeBSD and Salesforce is built on Linux. Perhaps if you did a few searches you might be able to find some intersting articles. For example I found a page about Yahoo & FreeBSD
I'm using for a long time the Linux ATM. There are several articles in the net. To me it's an interesting project.
There's a Newsforge story about Howard County Public Library. They were also written up in an ALA publication.
Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!.
Not completed yet, but it would definately be worth watchin what happens in Munich, Germany, which switched over to Linux. Google for it, there should be lots of material (although some in German of course...)