OSS Watch, a UK organization that provides advise to higher and further education institutions on the legal, social, technical and economic impact of open source software utilization, has released its latest OSS Watch Survey 2006.

The survey, conducted during February and March 2006, looks at Higher and Further Education attitudes and policies towards open source software (OSS). In the desktop applications area 68% of the respondants answered they are deploying Firefox, while 22% said so about Thunderbird, Mozilla's email client. Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office, are both deployed in 100% of desktops according to the survey. OpenOffice.org, an open source office suite is available on 23% of respondants'desktops.

Among other findings, it also concludes that unlike proprietary software, choosing open source software obeys to specific goals: saving on total costs of ownership, lower likelihood of getting locked in to a solution from a specific vendor, and better interoperability with other products."