A survey by Accenture also showed that nearly 40 percent of those queried also planned to migrate critical operations to open source systems in the next 12 months.

About half the 300 organizations – in both the public and private sectors – already are using or have committed to using open source software and about a third are experimenting with OSS. Fully 88 percent of those that already are using OSS in their operations plan to increase their investment.

What may be the key finding in the survey, however, is the reasons behind the move toward open source: Quality.

Firms in the U.K. were more positive about the quality. When asked which aspects of OSS were very or quite important in their decision to go with the open source solutions, 86 percent of the UK organizations surveyed said open source provided better quality software than proprietary systems, and just 49 percent pointed to the lower total cost of ownership. In the U.S., those figures were 66 percent and 65 percent, respectively.

When it came to the disadvantages of open source, those in the U.S. were far more likely to cite the lack of “true standards” (42 percent) or “development control” (29 percent), while those in the U.K. were focused overwhelmingly on training and education in how to use open source (41 percent), though the standards also were an issue (29 percent). Interestingly, no one in the U.S. cited training and education as an issue.

But in the U.S., companies were far more likely to expect their investment to increase than in the U.K. — 82 percent versus 56 percent.

From Net Workworld

I do not see a single reason why people should adhere to a standard piece of software. I’m sure if you renamed the title bar of OpenOffice.org Writer to Microsoft Word, 99% of people would not notice the difference! So why do they elect to stick with the most popular piece of software?

For example, most schools will use Microsoft Office instead of OpenOffice.org, despite the expense to the tax payer. If you ask why they choose to use MS Office, they will say it’s important because businesses use Microsoft Office and that it is the industry standard.

So why do businesses, which are normally capitalist establishments, lower their profits by paying for software? Probably because their employees are only trained for Microsoft Office. Who trains them? Businesses and schools, who train using MS Office.

I’m sure 75% of people could do whatever they want to do using OpenOffice.org just through their MS Office training (we might have issues with macros etc.). They’re just scared.

It’s a vicious cycle: people get trained for Microsoft Office, business demands Microsoft Office so more people get trained through Microsoft Office.

Can the cycle be broken? Probably not but if it did, it would require bold moves. Governments would have to encourage the education system to use FOSS as well as governmental departments, forcing businesses to change. This will never happen due to vested interests and (not to be horrible) technical ignorance amongst governments (the internet’s a series of tubes according to Sen. Ted Stevens).