An Informal Study Of K12 Classroom Software Costs

PGillingwater writes "Rob Lineweaver has written a concise summary of how much it would cost (and the savings that can be achieved) to set up the (almost) complete infrastructure in the Harrisonburg City Public Schools. He estimates that using commercial packages instead of open source would have cost the K12 schools an extra $27,000 in software license costs. More interestingly, he states that this is not only about cost. He says: 'This makes it apparent that not all of the benefit of open source software deployment in is the form of cost savings; much of the benefit is in terms of capabilities gained. In other words, through the use of free software, I am able to do more within my budget than I could if I only had commercial solutions available.'"

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In case of slashdotting here's the text

[boster]

Cost savings of open source software
in the server room
An informal case study in K-12 education

1. What is open source software?
2. Listing of open source software used
3. Cost savings versus capabilities gained
4. Implicit savings in hardware
5. Other implicit cost savings
1. Security
2. Lower virus vulnerability
3. Upgrade costs
6. The roadblock to using open source software
7. A big thanks to OSS developers

1. What is open source software?

It is often difficult for people to understand that some of the most secure, reliable, and efficient software in the world is not owned by a company but rather is under an open license. Open source software is software that was developed with the source code freely available to the public. Anyone may download and use the software, and make changes to it as necessary, with the hope that any improvements made by individuals will be committed back to the main source tree so that everyone can benefit from the modifications.

While this may sound like a strange way to develop software, it is surprisingly common and effective. For instance, in October 2002, SourceForge.net (a site that offers free hosting for open software development projects) reached the milestone of hosting 50,000 open source projects with over 500,000 registered developers. Many people who, if asked, could only name two operating systems would be staggered to learn how many free and open source complete operating systems exist in the world (and that there are several free OS's that could run on the very hardware you're reading this web page with).

Although few people in my school division know what Linux is, every one of them uses it indirectly every day. Open source software has a particularly appropriate niche in budget-strapped public education institutions. This document aims to describe the benefits that Harrisonburg City Public Schools has reaped from the deployment of open source software in its server rooms.

2. Listing of open source software used

While certainly not comprehensive, the list below contains a large sample of the free software products that we employ in HCPS. I have attempted to estimate the cost of replacing these free software installations with commercial products. It should be noted that in some cases my estimations are really just wild guesses as to the cost of various commercial solutions. As a general rule I have tried to estimate on the conservative side. Another thing to note is that commercial solutions for a number of the products below often come bundled as one product, making it very difficult to assign individual replacement costs to the items. For instance, most commercial mail server solutions bundle an SMTP server and an IMAP server together while the open source community's philosophy is to create one product for each discrete function.
Software Estimated cost of
commercial solution
Linux distributions
Red Hat Linux
Linux distribution for i386 (PC) hardware $150 x 17 = $2550
YellowDog Linux
Linux distribution for PowerPC (Macintosh) hardware $130 x 5 = $650
Web server software
Apache
The most widely used web server on the internet $500 x 6 = $3000
PHP
Server-side web scripting language $700 x 5 = $3500
MySQL
Structured Query Language database server $500 x 3 = $1500
phpMyAdmin
Powerful web-based database administration tool $100 x 3 = $300
DataMiner
User-friendly web-based interface for managing database content $50 x 12 = $600
ht://Dig
WWW Search Engine Software $200 x 1 = $200
Outreach Project Tool
Web-based group project collaboration environment $500 x 1 = $500
Phorum
Web-based forum/message board software $100 x 1 = $100
Mail server software
Sendmail
Internet standard MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) $150 x 1 = $150
UW IMAP
University of Washington IMAP/POP3 mail server $150 x 1 = $150
OpenLDAP
LDAP server for intregrated authentication and directory services $200 x 2 = $400
MailMan
Full-featured mailing list manager $150 x 1 = $150
Horde Groupware
Web-based email, address book, and calendaring software $500 x 1 = $500
Firewalling/Routing software
netfilter/iptables
Stateful IP filtering system $1000 x 2 = $2000
Cross-platform file server software
Samba
File server for Windows clients $800 x 4 = $3200
Netatalk
File server for Macintosh clients $500 x 7 = $3500
Other network server products
ISC BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Daemon)
Internet standard DNS server $100 x 9 = $900
ISC DHCP
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol server $100 x 8 = $800
WU-FTPD
FTP server software $50 x 3 = $150
NTPd
Network Time Protocol server for synchronization of computer clocks $50 x 4 = $200
Squid
HTTP caching proxy server $200 x 2 = $400
rsync
Incremental backup solution $50 x 12 = $600
Network management and monitoring
MRTG (Multi-Router Traffic Grapher)
Monitors traffic on switches and routers a lot x 3 = 3 lots
Nagios
Monitors servers and routers and notifies me of outages via email $300 x 1 = $300
Ethereal
Network analysis and packet sniffing tool $1000 x 1 = $1000
sntop
Monitors network connectivity $30 x 1 = $30
LanLord
Monitors leases on DHCP servers Bundled with
commercial products
Webalizer
Web server statistics reporting tool Bundled with
commercial products
Analog
Web server statistics reporting tool Bundled with
commercial products

The list above comprises about $27,000 of (roughly) estimated cost savings in software purchases for HCPS.

3. Cost savings versus capabilities gained

The commercial replacement cost of the free software that we currently use is obviously very high. However, if I were forced to deploy commercial solutions for all of the above, you could probably guess that I would trim back what we needed to buy significantly. For instance, if it cost me $1000 per web server for the server OS and web server software, you can bet that I wouldn't be running six web servers in my server room like I am now. Rather, I would cut back and only run one or perhaps two web servers. This makes it apparent that not all of the benefit of open source software deployment in is the form of cost savings; much of the benefit is in terms of capabilities gained. In other words, through the use of free software, I am able to do more within my budget than I could if I only had commercial solutions available.

4. Implicit savings in hardware

Linux can do a lot with only a little hardware. Here in HCPS we have a number of Linux servers running on hardware that would be inadequate for commercial server solutions such as Windows 2000 or Mac OS X. For instance, the web server that served this web page to you is running on an old, retired PC that has been recycled after its lifetime as a Windows desktop has passed. If I were to use Microsoft's IIS server software or Apple's Mac OS X, I would not have considered using this piece of hardware as a web server, and I would have needed to buy new hardware. By enabling me to reuse otherwise useless hardware, open source operating systems have saved our school division a considerable amount of money in hardware costs.

To provide a very rough figure on these cost savings, I estimate that I am currently running 11 Linux servers with hardware that would be inadequate for doing the same job with a commercial solution. To replace those servers with new hardware could easily cost well over $25,000.

5. Other implicit cost savings

1. Security
Many companies put a lot of effort into monetary assessments of the liabilities of security risks on their networks. Such cost assessment is not as common in public education but nevertheless the possibilities for such costs exist and should not be ignored. If my installations of open source server software are more secure than a commercial alternative (and I believe they are, although a discussion of security issues is beyond the scope of this document), then we have a lower risk of losing data or productive staff time needed to clean up after a security breach.
2. Lower virus vulnerability
I am not qualified to provide a full analysis of virus vulnerabilities of various server operating systems, but I think everyone would agree that historically open source OS's have fared far better than... ahem... other operating systems. The HCPS technology staff spends a fair amount of valuable time combatting viruses on our client PC's but a virus infection on a network server can be devastating in terms of data loss, down time, and staff time required for reconstruction. Open source servers that are less vulnerable to virus infections provide cost savings in terms of decreased liability in these areas.
3. Upgrade or recurring licensing costs
The cost of a software solution is not merely the purchase price of the software. The usable lifetime of a commercial software product is rarely longer than 4 years, but where server software products are concerned I would contend that the lifetime is even less -- perhaps only 2 years on average. At this point one must purchase a newer product or an upgrade to the existing one. With open source software, updates are continually free, and I am able to keep my servers running the latest software versions without having to worry about whether I can afford the upgrade.

6. The roadblock to using open source software

So you're probably thinking, "If open source software saves people so much money, why isn't everyone using it?" Two words: learning curve. For people who are used to point-and-click administration of their servers, open source software is often bewilderingly complex to install and configure. I'll admit that you have to be somewhat of a geek to even try out an open source operating system such as Linux. The learning curve that must be followed by a first-time Linux user can be very time consuming and frustrating. For many, especially in public education, this difficulty constitutes a roadblock to the deployment of open source solutions in their district.

7. A big thanks to OSS developers

As you have seen from the informal analysis on this page, I (and indeed my school division) owe a huge "thank you" to the thousands of developers and other people involved in open source software projects.

Copyright 2002
Rob Lineweaver
Last Modified: Friday, October 25, 2002 Product names on this page
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