Abstract

Open Source Software (“OSS”) has attracted significant research interest but research has focused on the development process (“supply side”) of OSS leaving the “demand-side” of OSS relatively unexplored. Further, extant OSS research is lacking in empirical studies. In this study we fill the gap with an empirical analysis of antecedents of perceived customer satisfaction with Linux, the most popular OSS product. We used Ordered Logit technique to analyze a dataset collected through a survey of business-technology professionals. Our results suggest that perceived customer satisfaction with Linux is positively influenced by duration of use and the quality of third party support. We also found a strong relationship between perceived satisfaction with Linux and prevalence of other OSS products in the organization. Further, we found that perceived customer satisfaction with Linux is lower for large firms and higher when the largest distribution of Linux is used. Interestingly, internal IT support capability was found to have no significant effect on perceived customer satisfaction with Linux. Our results contribute to research by verifying traditional customer satisfaction models in an OSS context and also by extending these models to include unique aspects of OSS. On practice side, this research provides directions to the OSS community for achieving higher customer satisfaction.

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