Biografia del relatore

Altay S. Özaygen was born in Ankara, Turkey on July 9, 1972. Having lived 6 years of his childhood at France, he finished the high school at Ankara. He got his BS in 1996 and MS in 1999 from Depart. of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Middle East Technical University. From April 1998 to June 2000 Mr. Özaygen got a scholarship from Japanese Ministry of Education and worked as a researcher at the Kumamoto University on the same field as his master thesis, shape memory alloys. Altay S. Özaygen is using GNU/Linux since 1998 as a desktop and his interest to computers conducted him to work at METU Computer Center as a programmer and analyst since 2000. From 2001 to 2004 he studied at the Department of Science and Technology Policy Studies at METU. His last master thesis research was about the diffusion of FOSS on desktop PCs at METU within the framework of diffusion of innovation.

Abstract

Free/Open Source Software OS like GNU/Linux systems are an important alternative to the dominant Microsoft Windows OS on the desktop market niche. The Ankara campus of Middle East Technical University (METU) is the first university to be connected to the Internet in Turkey since 1993. There are more than 5000 active IPs in the METU, Ankara campus. METU, apart from still being a model university to other Turkish universities in many aspects, METU Computer Center, with a staff of more than 150 persons, has a considerably great knowledge accumulation on a large scale, with its campus wide networking, the system administration, in-house-software development, etc. In addition to these capabilities the 'tr' domain name service is provided by METU Computer Center. If METU is considering a migration from Microsoft OSs, in order to achieve this important step, it needs to have an acceptable policy designed for this institution.

In this research, the diffusion of free and open source software (FOSS) on desktop PCs at METU is investigated within the framework of the diffusion of innovation theory. This research aimed to investigate the ratio of diffusion of the FOSS Operating System within METU and the possible reasons for its acceptance and rejection. The ultimate target of this research is to help decision makers within METU toward the design of their own policy, involving a possible migration from Microsoft OSs which dominates the campus to FOSS OS. The research is conducted through two similar web-based surveys. The first survey was held during 27-28 September 2003 after the examination of exemption for the IS100 course, which is taken by freshmen and the student of English preparatory class. It is designed to give the student enough knowledge of computing, word processing as well as using spreadsheets, which are unfortunately limited solely to Microsoft products. The aim of the course is to prepare the student to be self-reliant on his/her assignments which will be done on a PC. Students taking this exam consider themselves as computer-literate and try to exempt themselves from taking this course. The second survey was held between 23 March and 24 May 2004 in the whole of the METU campus. This survey was open to all students, academic and non-academic staff having a METU network account. There were 402 participants in the first survey and 1224 in the second. These surveys were designed to depict users approach to FOSS on the basis of adopters behaviors which are;

Those who adopted FOSS OS.

Those who will use FOSS OS.

Those who will not use FOSS OS.

Those who never used FOSS OS.

Those who never heard of what free software and/or open source softwares are.

As expected, Microsoft OS rules the desktop PCs within the METU campus. According to the surveys, there is a rather large PC user base which could potentially migrate to FOSS OS. This user base, comprises those who uses older versions of Microsoft OS, those who are unsatisfied by their OS. In addition to a large amount of data, it has been found out that a migration to FOSS is welcomed greatly by the users if the process is explained on the basis of public and personal economic gains. However personal migration is still difficult if the user is left alone to install any new OS. Some of the propositions which will eventually help the migration process are also proposed. Furthermore, different innovation decision models are discussed based on the research findings.