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Student Administrative Software for Unix?
MISplice asks: "I have been searching for a Linux alternative to SASIxp which is a student administrative databse for K-12 schools (it does grades, schdeuling, and holds demographic and medical data). I have found the OpenSIS project which seems to be on hiatus and never past the implementation stages. Does anyone know of such a product or project that is under development? If not does anyone know if these types of products will work under WINE?" Have there been any new developments in this area since this article from 2000?
Check out colleges and see what they use. I go to RIT http://www.rit.edu we have SIS that students use to get all their info about schedules, grades, etc. And it also allows all the faculty to grade us. Just about every university has some sort of electronic SIS nowadays. Try e-mailing a few IT departments and ask them what they use.
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I have been working in higher ed (not K-12) application software for > 10 years. Every consortium for administrative software that I have experienced - and there have been several - have been colossal failures. Consortiums are the ultimate design by committee, and DBC is the worst way to design software.
I'd love to see some open source limited market application software projects. There aren't many, for this reason: This type of application software needs domain experts and programmers. Ideally, if the domain expert is also a programmer, you'll get the best software. A talented programmer who is also a domain expert and wants to build open source software is a rare bird indeed. Add to that the immense commitment required for all but the simplest application programs, and you see why limited market application programs are not open source.