An Investigation into the Use of Open Source Software Development Tools in the South African Mining Industry

There is a migration from proprietary software development tools to open source software (OSS) in many industries, but this transition has been slow in the South African mining industry. There is minimal evidence of any research on OSS in South Africa and even less in the South African mining industry. Through semi-structured interviews with IT managers at one of the largest mining groups in South Africa, we explored the OSS tools being used, the benefits of these tools and the obstacles to OSS adoption using the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework. We found that there is a growing interest in adopting OSS tools but that security concerns, lack of control, support, maintenance issues and intellectual property concerns hinder adoption. This research can assist practitioners and researchers in the change management necessary to facilitate OSS adoption specific to mining, and it can provide a baseline for future research in OSS in mining, as current literature is scant.