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?

Comments

Re:Interesting concept

[lal]

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.

Re:Just build it yourself.

[stevenbdjr]

In the amount of time it's taken you to research the project you probably could have built one.

Obviously, you've never used a product like SASIxp, or worked in a K-12 school district for that matter. These are incredibly complex packages that handle everything from student records to financial records. In addition, they store the kind of information that allows state and federal mandated reports to be generated, and can generate those reports in the exact manner required.

You're also assuming that the poster is a developer, or has such skills.

Re:Interesting concept

[aminorex]

What K12 needs is zero-administration. That means
support staff and a recurring service charge.
I tried to sell such a project (open source scheduling/
grading) to the local public school service co-op,
but they wouldn't fund it. I went to the Minnesota
department of childhood families and learning, and
they *loved* my demo and prototype, which included
9 man-months of effort invested in collecting the
local and state-wide graduation standards to allow
students to see what they needed and how they were
progressing towards graduation while they selected
their classes, but they weren't interested in
funding it either.

Really, this is a gold-mine opportunity for an ASP
start-up. I've got the experience and even a lot of
the code and data to do it, but I don't have the bizdev acumen to make this fly. If you're an angel
investor tired of dot-com flim-flam and want to
do something that really helps people as well as
making money hand-over-fist, give me a buzz.