Slashdot Mirror
How Do I Start a University Transition To Open Source?
exmoron writes "I work at a small university (5,500 students) and am in a position to potentially influence future software purchasing decisions. I use a number of FOSS solutions at home (OpenOffice.org, Zotero, GIMP, VirtualBox). My university, on the other hand, is a Microsoft and proprietary software groupie (Vista boxes running MS Office 2007, Exchange email server, Endnote, Photoshop, Blackboard, etc.). I'd like to make an argument that going open source would save the university money and think through a gradual transition process to open source software (starting small, with something like replacing Endnote with Zotero, then MS Office with OpenOffice.org, and so on). Unfortunately, I can't find very good information online on site licenses for proprietary software. How much does a site-license for Endnote cost? What about a site license for MS Office for 2,000 computers? In short, what's the skinny on moving to open source? How much money could a university like mine save? Additionally, what other benefits are there to moving to open source that I could try to sell the university on? And what are the drawbacks (other than people whining about change)?"
Bes
http://osor.eu/case_studies/declaration-of-independence-the-limux-project-in-munich
You won't be able to win this with the money argument. Microsoft will swarm all over you, giving free stuff away. They have a fund just to give away free licenses to anyone who's even thinking about trying open source.
No, since you're a university, the way to approach this is to let the undergrads explore. Sell it as a learning experience. Why is OSS so popular nowadays? Maybe the University itself, as a place of learning, should offer this? Don't limit it to just OSS, bring up OSX as well, to be fair. Let the students explore.
Now, how to get everything work well together? Why, we depend on open standards of course! The entire Internet is built on open standards, RFCs and so on. All the software must be open interfaces (exchange has imap, for example, and AD has ldap). Keep doing this. Get in touch with the contracting office, and ask them to consider putting language in for their RFPs and RFIs to include "must work with appropriate open standards".
Slowly, but surely, things will get better.
Go for the two easy wins first.
Cut your costs on licensing. Get ALL of the decison makers together and get them to put out a 100% unified front. Announce a total conversion to open source for the 2011-2012 year so as to be plausible. Then wait for your Microsoft rep to show up and offer the incentives. Take them.
Now you are a hero to everyone in the university who is in on the con you just pulled. This will be useful to you as you slowly do the real conversion.
The other easy win is to cut the costs to your students. Office and Blackboard.Mandate ODF for any document that crosses the barrier between the school and the students. This relieves them of the requirement to obtain Office and YOU the cost of buying that big site license out of the student fees that is the real reason the students get those low low prices in the bookstore.
You of course continue to offer Office Student at the regular student rates for those who want it because your Microsoft rep is sniffing around. You also be sure to have OpenOffice.org 3.1 DVDs hanging at the register for $5. Be fuzzy about just where those came from, but heck in this economy it sure does save the students money. It's just too popular to pull off the counter.
Blackboard is a never ending cause of cross platform pain (at least it was a couple of years ago) so ditch it. It not being a Microsoft product you can probably get away with it while running the con above. You tell them that will be your token (picked because it IS no visible) conversion to be able to 'claim victory' on your previous grandious project.
After this step students should be able to use whatever the heck they want. Many will probably be using netbooks in this down economy, thus they can buy the really cheap Linux ones. The college bookstore can be encouraged to stock with this in mind. Linux and open source would then be in a position to bubble up.
Democrat delenda est
if you don't know how much your site licenses cost, then you aren't in a position to influence future software purchasing decisions.
Solving a problem that has not been stated is not appreciated. I'd wait till I'm told to lead the change. OTOH, you may want to keep a diverse environment too.
Yet, you don't know how much you are spending on site licenses? I have a feeling you don't have as much influence as you think...
i did one recently to justify the purchase of a new backup system. i got the purchase orders and added how much it all cost over the last 3 years for support, maintenance, offsite tape storage, etc. then compared to a new LTO-4 and estimated a few years out. put everything in a nice easy to read PPT to show how buying a new tape library will save a lot of money going forward.
Same here. get all the costs associated with whatever you run. You might need to ask your boss of finance department. estimate the costs of transition and running the new solution and compare the two.
MS licensing is a nightmare and there are a bunch of programs depending on how much users you have and which program you buy into. ask your finance people to pull copies of the purchase orders.
I work in a 95% MS shop. Reason MS rules is 90% of all MS software is stupid little scripts to make things easier. like the box to create a new user in AD. With Open Source you need to customize a lot of it and it may cost money for the consultants, extra support, etc. I help manage 30 or so SQL servers and in the last 2 years our support costs were around $1000 for a few support cases. In all cases MS released a hotfix after we opened a case. No need for custom coding.
we do have a lot of internally depeloved apps and it's like Quake point releases with them. constant updates and fixes.
I part-manage some of a University's software installations (amongst other things) and our institution uses a mix of free and proprietary software. We choose according to what is the best solution in each case and sometimes support overlapping programs - for example multiple email clients and operating systems. Your University may save money by going open source and all other things being equal, this is what you should go for. I'm a strong Open Source proponent myself. However, the real costs are not usually in the licencing, but in the staff costs to maintain and support an application or platform. Do NOT blindly charge in, trying to substitute OS for proprietary based purely on cost. You risk creating an unfairly bad impression of OS software. You don't say what your position actually is. If you are going to be tasked with supporting all this change, then consider carefully the strain any migration puts on your resource.
What is your actual position at the University and what substituted software do you have in mind. I (and others) may be able to offer useful advice if you give us specifics. Otherwise we're stuck with generalities. For example, I could provide very convincing support material for moving from Blackboard to the Open Source Moodle. I would charge for actual consultation work on it though.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
You are going to need to assess the things that simply cannot be switched to open source and find out how they will be implemented in the new "mostly" open source strategy. For instance, almost all scientific instruments come from vendors that only have a version for windows. Since most government regulations for research, particularly for clinical, medical, and drug research, require a life-cycle validated software, there will be no open source software for these groups. Since your school is very small you probably don't have much technical research equipment.
It's not "whining" to resist change. All changes have a cost, measurable or not. Pretending they don't makes you look foolish.
Right.. because we all know that kids that play with OSS become murderers..?
The guy is not mentioning doing this for the kids, he just wants to let his university make a conscious choice on what software to use (which can be either proprietory or open), rather than to blindly fall for the microsoft package because the latter are more agressively marketed at universities.
yro, askslashdot, and education story I understand but why the mention of suppliers of overpriced underhardwared junk?
It doesn't surprise me that you can't find good information about this. Even if you found valid pricing for a medium-sized business, I doubt that universities have the same pricing. Universities themselves also negotiate directly with Microsoft (at least the larger ones do), leading to differences in pricing and terms. Unis also often negotiate to obtain student pricing on products like Office. For example:
University of Wisconsin Office 2007 Enterprise: $72
University of Michigan Office 2007 Enterprise: $47
The real question is, if you're "in a position to potentially influence future software purchasing decisions", how do you not have access to the current expenditures on software licensing? What you really need are current expenditures and knowledge about when the current contract expires.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
sheltering from ms-word may be wrong.
fostering them to use ms-word definitively is.
where you can anticipate few bumps in the road.
My old school has cluster of 4-8 computers around campus, used for nothing but websurfing. Even locked down completely, IE would be loaded down with strange toolbars and what not every few weeks. I always thought it would been a great solution to have linux on them, perhaps 1 real computer and the others in that closely clustered group as dumb terminals.
Some type of way to introduce them and their cost savings to the administration at large without having it blow up in your face because of incompatibilities or someone's pet program won't run.
Sounds like a big job, don't start on that scale.
Start small, if you don't have people with skills in-house it would be good by starting with basics to introduce them to such skills. Pick a small department with willing staff/students to pilot a Linux/FOSS project and then give them the computers and resources. Once they get the hang of it and start developing then use their young enthusiasm to see what you could do with it. You get both the educational value, and the experience without sacrificing productivity en masse.
I hear many anecdotes about engineering departments doing Linux early on... or just look for case studies and see what would work for a starter project... maybe a library revise? I hear there is some good progress on library apps and LTSP is a good deployment model for such.
You mean all those folks don't know what their budget for all those licenses cost, and they haven't kept track of all the licenses and entitlement? Why just sic the BSA on them :-) Maybe the BSA will offer to NOT sue them if they continue to use Microsoft software of questionable provenance instead of Open Source software that is free for academic and personal use.
Do not use OSS for the sake of using OSS. In the real world everyone uses Windows and Office, if you take that away from computer labs, you are going to piss off a lot of people and take away valuable experience from students. I'm all for OSS, using Linux myself, but I know that forcing OSS doesn't always help, especially somewhere that is meant to prepare you for the real world.
By the time someone gets to university, you're usually no longer a child but an adult.
Where do you get this "supposed to"? Universities are many things to many people. For some, they are to teach ideology. For others, training in a job. Seeing that a chef, during an apprenticeship, may not use the same sets of pots, pans, knives or even stove as in the commercial kitchen he end up is no failure of the place that trained him. A competent chef will get used and adapt to this new, different but similiar situation.
An incompetent one would have been tripped up by something else along the way anyway.
Are you really arguing that different office package the average person uses are that dramatically different? And the harder core stuff with real differences, such as compilers or the like, are usually taught to people who can grasp different software once exposed rather quickly.
A university is supposed to educate a child as to the world of software
Really? Maybe you are thinking of trade schools. A university is supposed to provide a well-rounded education. Indoctrinating into the world of Microsoft might be helpful in getting a white-collar-grunt job, but it is not in any way vital to a liberal arts education.
And anyway, a large percentage of universities use *nix and/or Macs. Are they all failing in their educational mission as well?
The cost of Microsoft software depends largely on the state where you work. For example in Texas there is the Texas Department of Informational Resources that negotiates pricing for 99% of Gov/Ed. They form contracts and have authorized distributors that sell at that price. Also I would become more familiar with how your university is structured. Some are divided into multiple schools (CS School, Business Management School) and each has its own rules and purchasing. Your best bet is to start with a small student facing project like a lab that uses 100% open source and possibly take your time to give occasional tutorials on how to use stuff there. Or possibly start a NEW project using open source teaching products like Moodle, dont try and replace an existing one. Once you have that small win you can use it as leverage to prove that going 100% open source is possible. Also dont expect to change the school overnight. Also be sure to be realistic with your expectations. You will almost never ever be able to get a company to drop Microsoft Exchange/Outlook or Windows Server if they use it currently. Find another area to leverage open source and leave those alone.
Maybe M$ can afford to flood your market with crap, but Blackboard likes getting lots of money and is notoriously secretive about their licensing fee structure near as I can tell.
Go to Moodle.org and search for posts about licensing fees. Might be a real eye-opener.
At the not small state university where I teach (more than 40,000 students), I'm probably the only person using Moodle and when students complain that it sucks as much as Blackboard, I remind that that, (a) sure, (b) but it sucks for free, and (c) how do they like those tuition increases?!
Personally as someone who works in the visual arts industry, switching to GIMP would be a major disservice to the art/ graphics students, mainly because GIMP doesn't (or is not allowed) to support Pantone colors and 16-bit channels, which is integral for color manipulation and matching for print publishing.
Don't get me wrong, GIMP is great for "basic" photoshopping if the intent is for web publishing, but for print purposes I'm still not sure if GIMP is there yet, nor do I have the time and budget to test GIMP unless it matched all the features of photoshop, and it gave me additional beneftis (other than free price tag) to switch from photoshop.
To me, GIMP is designed for an inkjet printer whereas Photoshop is designed for a 4-color process printing shop.
Getting Firefox on all university-owned machines is a great first step. Install the IETab extension on Windows machines as a transition measure for those pesky sites which work better in IE (Blackboard, for example).
Next, get OpenOffice installed in the same manner.
Then, do the con suggested in this comment. Get MS to shower you in free licenses for things just so you can see how much you'd save if things were free.
Next up is policy. Move towards a policy which favors open, published standards, not just open source. For instance, that comment says to make ODF the official format of college-student communications because it is the most accessible format (since it doesn't virtually require an expensive program to read). If any university staff so much as utters something like, "We should use whatever format we like. Students should expect to make purchases in order to advance their education," you need to combat that mentality promptly with something like, "We're in a position to lower the cost of education in both visible and transparent ways by offering better choices to our students, we need to do that."
The last step I'll talk about is to work on the professorial end. Get professors to send documentation in ODF and PDF and require submissions in those formats. Get graphics teachers to do a week or two on open source graphics tools. Get a professor to teach a class or hold lunch-time discussions on the use of TeX for research documents and proposals and such. There are very few science majors who would not benefit from instruction in TeX.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Of course not, the proper way it to strip out what you have and start from scratch. Otherwise, the entrenched installation will continually pop back to the forefront. Converting from one system to another is a painful, wrenching process - much like getting to cold water. It's best to jump in, do that whole-body shiver, and then get on with your swim. Getting in slowly is a good way to decide you don't want to do it at all.
You'll need a serious migration plan for everything - from common, office apps which have an installed base of thousands (if not more) non-compatible templates, to win-dependent commercial programs, to custom apps written for the old platform which are mission critical but the developer is no longer around. You'll need to organize training for everyone. Twice. And you'll need a kick-ass help desk for everything from copying files to equivalents of obscure Excel formulas.
You have two real possibilities here: A decade of superman-like endurance and patience coupled with a slick-MBA marketing scheme, or utter and complete failure resulting in poor reviews, lousy job satisfaction, and likely counseling (make sure the uni has a good mental health rider with their insurance).
I don't necessarily mean to dissuade you but it's going to take a lot of spit and polish and going piecemeal is a near guarantee of failure. You're going to have to hide the retraining costs, or your plan will fail. This might be too large an organization to try and switch unless you have serious zealots at the top on your side.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Don't be braindead.
Unless your entire student body are computer science students (and even then), students comming in are going to be looking for Vista and Windows 7, or maybe macs.
I'd like to make an argument that going open source would save the university money
You'll have no end of support issues because linux just doesn't work the way they expect. It doesn't matter if linux is supposedly better or worse, it doesn't work the way they expect, and they aren't going want to learn all new software to go to some school with only 5500 people unless you're harvard.
Do you have a science department? Have they tried this suggestion of switching from MS office to OpenOffice? Yes, most of the papers etc. are still done in LaTeX but students you definately do not want to inflict openoffice on them. I tried that last year where I was with a physics department, it wasn't pretty. OpenOffice didn't print special characters properly, probably once you're used to it the equation editor is better than office, but the students know office, they know the documentation for office they are there to learn science not waste time learning your software package which doesn't work very well.
I'm at a University now where the computer science network for students (2nd year and above actual comp sci students) is basically all linux (except the game development stuff). You know what happens? They all develop in visual studio at home and port it over for submission and are sick of putting up with a system which is out of touch with their understanding of computing. There's always the hardcore nerd holdout in the class who uses vi for everything and thinks it's wonderful, but he is distinctly the minority.
How about some of the other classes? The last two places I've been have had a 'multimedia communications' sort of course. It's kind of bullshit, but that doesn't matter, it attracts a lot of students. It relies on Photoshop, in part because that's what people in the real world that pay real money want. Know a free alternative? Good for you. Students want to know Photoshop because that's what they need to get jobs that pay real money, trying to convince them to use GIMP will add a layer of frustration.
There are elements of a university that can be switched, but if you're seriously considering moving an entire university to 'free' software someone else should have your job.
Those 'people whining about change' are either your paying customers, who will simply go somewhere else if you piss them off enough, or the people who control the money supply, who will fire you if you piss them off enough. Yes, part of university is a business transaction, hopefully not the actual education part, but they expect buildings, lights, computers they know how to use etc. and unless you have some awesome brand recognition, they're going to go somewhere lese.
Yes! Exactly! Your argument is so wonderfully persuasive. You've totally discouraged me from open source software! I will only send my children to universities that support convicted monopolists and their patent/copyright law abusing corporate pals. Also, I 100% agree that free as in speech OR beer software shouldn't exist to insure the enrichment of these companies.
It is of UTMOST importance that I spend two years of wages on an education designed to give my kids painstakingly detailed, precise instruction on where to point-click in MS-Word to make pretty charts! And to help cover the licensing costs, I will GLADLY support and requests to raise tuition. After all, it would be down right un-American to not work my ass off to help cloth and feed a bunch of rich assholes!
No sig for you!!
You can do it by paying attention to what your users need, not just what you want. OpenOffice.org may be an acceptable substitute for MS Office apps in your organization. Or, you may hobble the faculty because they're required to submit Word documents for various publications, using Word templates. It's bad enough having to suffer through this in Word, but having to manage this with another layer of indirection sounds utterly intolerable. That situation sucks, but you aren't going to change it by unilateral decree.
Likewise, using the GIMP vs. Photoshop may be great for some of your users. But if they're using features daily in Photoshop that aren't supported in GIMP, soon they'll be GIMP'ing up dartboards with your face on it.
Simply put, users care about applications that meet their needs and organizations should too. If you are truly in a position to influence these decisions, then your responsibility is to understand and meet those needs, not serve your own ideology. Working contrary to users' needs is a terrible way to promote the OSS software cause; you'll make more enemies for OSS than friends.
> You can't replace MS Office, a desktop app, with OpenOffice.org, a f***ing website.
Yes you can. Due to trademark issues the formal name of the product IS OpenOffice.org or OO.o for short. The .org is really part of the name. Yes it is a bit silly, but that's lawyers for you.
Democrat delenda est
"And what are the drawbacks (other than people whining about change)?"
I'm sorry, but resistance to change is probably the major drawback. No matter what the financial, security, or maintenance benefits, you'll run into a sizable fraction of the university population (if not the majority) that will resist any attempt at displacing the entrenched products. Some of the reasons will be whining, some of them will be legitimate.
I know what I'm talking about because I am one of those "resistors" to change. Not because I'm unwilling to learn, or because I'm decades old and stuck in my antiquated ways. I do learn new programming languages, code, run half a dozen systems with OS X, Windows, and Linux on them -- whatever it takes to get the job done. I'm not generally afraid of change or learning new things.
But when my IT people came around and said they wanted to install Vista and Office 2007 on the Windows machines in my lab I said "Why? No way. Take a hike." They forced us to upgrade our student lab from Office 2003 to 2007. It lasted about 2 weeks before we begged them to re-install Office 2003.
Why the resistance? Because what I've got works fine and it's a fricking waste of my and my student's time to learn it all over again, find all the inevitable compatibility quirks with the software we and others have written, and work around the problems -- and for what benefit, exactly? Nothing. There's no significant benefit to these supposed "upgrades". Is Office 2007 spectacularly better than 2003? Gosh, no.
Maybe IT wants to waste their time deploying new OS and applications that are supposedly "new and improved", but I take an "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" attitude. And when I want to use OpenOffice, I'll deploy it on my own time, just as I have done already for several of the machines at home and work. It isn't perfect either, but it is better than Office 2007.
If you want to make it easy for people to switch if they so choose (e.g., by having a disk image with things customized for your particular university setup, or a series of FOSS programs that will be supported), that makes sense. I would treat it as an experiment initially. Start with support of that option and voluntary changes in small departments. Make it easy for people to try it out. If you want to be bold and if it works, offer some kind of financial or other carrot if they do switch from expensive proprietary options to cheaper ones (i.e. why should they spend *their* time switching in order to save the university's budget, when they don't get any of the financial benefit directly?).
Am I a whiner? Maybe. But I have my reasons. So will everyone else. If you start with the attitude you are displaying now you will not be successful with your goal.
how
How are you saving money when you are the only one using money and the rest uses blackboard?
With Vista (and "above" - 2k8, win7), Microsoft changed the way they do site licensing. Instead of having one key for every computer, every client does a DNS lookup for a Key Management Software Server (KMS server), which then simply activates the client computer. It does not keep a record of how many activations you have used, only the last 50.
Likewise, you just call them up, tell them how many computers you have, and they give you a price. A few minutes and many thousands of dollars later, you have a key to plug in to KMS. Magically, every Vista+ box that you have on site is licensed and activated. This can include student computers if you wish. The activations 6 months, after which time they *must* talk to the KMS server again.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/vol/default.mspx
Now look. I run centos/debian/openbsd/gentoo/xp/vista/server 2008. I really hate (operating system) licensing. I hate the simple concept. But KMS is really the way to go. It takes right next to no system resources. In the KMS docs, they say that most 100k+ client customers are perfectly content with 2 KMS servers (with the same key). Next to zero system load.
Second, Office.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/HA101080191033.aspx
There is also their Software Assurance program.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sa/default.mspx
Software Assurance has one big downside, and one big upside. The downside is that it is a yearly fee. It is more or less a subscription. The upside is that you are entitled to free upgrades of "the product" as long as you keep paying. This means that if you purchased SA on Office 2003 a year before 2007 was released, your 2003 license can be automatically upconverted to 2007 free of charge. The same applies to... all of their products. XP --> Vista --> Win7, SQL 2000 --> 2003 --> 2008, Visual Studio, the works. It is not a required upconversion either - you choose if and when you upgrade.
As a result, buying your weight in gold worth of Software Assurance also gives you 24/7 software support. It more or less gives you everything. Tech support, upgrades, technical resources... it is essentially the equal to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription in terms of the support you get, the products that you get, and the upgrades.
Really, your best bet to understanding MS licensing is to contact one of their reps. Gather everything that you can find before hand, and give them a call. Grill them endlessly. Ask questions, and don't let them leave until you know everything you needed.
What is the benefit of open source/free software? EVERYTHING ABOVE IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT.
You aren't going to save any money moving everything in the university to a whole new platform-- especially not if they're using all new products like Vista and Exchange 2007. What a tremendous waste. Re-installing everything and retraining all the employees and rewriting documentation for students will be outrageously expensive. If your University were looking to change/upgrade from some old outdated system or start a whole new system somewhere (like a new building?), that would be a different story.
It sounds like your university is already outfitted with a working infrastructure. They'd have to be either insane or spend-happy to go along with a plan like that.
If you want to shift to a new system, you will need to slowly introduce it into the ecoysystem, like a few boxes in a computer lab at a time. A new server for a new department, etc.
Get all your responsible staff and ask them publicly how much money they get as payback from M$.
Umm... is learning "MS-Word" that much of a skill? I wonder what all those word processing software did before MS came out with Word.
What you want to do is teach word processing techniques. Which, for someone who came out of any high school - competently, is a couple of hours of work, at most.
So, while the answer to your question is "no", the bigger question is - is it good for humanity to train the "children" to think in a more advanced way "word processing" than a more specific "MS-Word processing"? I say yes to that.
Every university is engaged in branding and advertising to some degree. One option with OSS is rebranding*. Customize the splash screen to include the university logo, change the color scheme to the university colors, and so on. Relatively minor stuff, but now you can claim it is customized for your university. That can make many egos very happy. As a side note, you can offer "free University of ? branded software" to alumni or potential students (or maybe even sell it at low cost for a source of income). Strengthen those ties and maybe even improve donations and student applications.
* Within reason and the confines of the license
I don't think it's the greatest idea to move to open source for software like MS Office. The reason being that most large corporations still use MS Office and that probably isn't going to change for a while. Writing on your resume that you have experience with Open Office at a company, like, say, Travelers, they aren't going to care since the company runs on Microsoft. While the university wants to save money and get more profit, most people are used to Microsoft products. I have a massively customized version of Blackboard that is used at my university and since they spend a lot of money on it, they won't switch to something else anytime soon. Plus it's already integrated with all the other systems.
I am being 100% honest here. I too work at a univeristy, a bit larger but same deal. You are shooting yourself in the foot big time, but well intentioned.
There are far too many individual needs in this setting to do what you propose. Instead identify and choose a few specific spots where open source actually makes sense and offers a huge advantage (there are a couple) and make it happen. Start small and be smart about it. If it goes smoothly and shows real savings and improvements you may have earned the chance to do the same in another area.
Openoffice sucks. Period. Large-scale monitoring and maintenance can also suck. Sometimes Mac OSX is even the best choice. You have to take off the rose-colored glasses and think critically about everyone's real needs not just your pie-in-the-sky dream.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Note to Mods.
Sarcasm is NOT trolling. TYVM.
OSS and Proprietary software both have their place and an University should encourage the use of both. Locking a user in either way is not a good idea. Yes techies can figure it out but what about another student that isn't as comfortable with computers. A graduate should be able to use the basic software right when they get out and because there is a mix of packages in the corp world it makes sense to not lock them in.
Educational institutions do not pay money for Microsoft products, at least in my experience. Microsoft actually pays most universities to use their shit. It looks like a charitable donation, and it helps propagate the idea to the future workforce that Microsoft is all that exists. If you want to save the school money, see if they actually give a cent to Microsoft, and if they do, make it known to Microsoft that the university is considering a switch to FOSS, and then, never pay for MS products again. Really.. businesses pay for Microsoft products. Schools do not, and if they do, they can easily get out of it.
In most organizations, it takes only a small group of whiners to transition the whole of an IT focus to something else. Trust me, I've been through this battle.
Make changes where it *makes sense*. Microsoft Office currently is best of breed, no offense meant to OpenOffice but seriously... it's not even in the same realm. Windows on the desktop obviously goes side by side with this.
Where you can make arguments are on the backend where users don't really have a say. Say you want to launch some web servers -- go *Nix and Apache instead of MS and IIS. Want a database cluster? Go *nix and MySQL. These are changes that *can* happen.
I have seen far too often that 'techies' get involved and just because the technology is more superior (in some way) they totally discount the business benefit from having it set up that way. What is your roadmap for the future of IT? What paths are you looking to cross? Say the CIO wants to invest some money into Sharepoint, or wants to use WIM (standard image format) for deployments, or wants to lock down users better (AD Policies). These things are *windows specific*. You can make the argument, but if you can't look at it from a business perspective, then you are already on the path to failing at your argument.
Usually the cost of changing everything, retraining users, and getting them to be AS PRODUCTIVE as they were before is far more expensive than to keep technology the same and use branches into other things to accomplish business tasks.
And don't say you're an educational facility... you're a business first, and any good business is in the *business* of making money or showing results. That's what you call an organizational unit :)
Good luck to you, but make sure you have your ducks in a row before you go making arguments of vast change, because if you don't know what the future holds or what the goals are, you will just look like an idiot.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
If you want to transition to OSS, start with new deployments where there is no legacy cruft to support... Try Moodle instead of blackboard for new deployments, it will save a fair bit of money and make it more accessible to students many of whom will have macs, linux or mobile devices like iphones.
Simultaneously, work on promoting open standards, have open standards used as the official protocols for communication with the university... And provide software to students/staff, in the form of full applications and plugins for proprietary applications to enable use of these formats.
Open formats are easier to sell than fully replacing existing software, you are making your education more accessible and future proofing.
Also consider repurposing old hardware that the university considers too slow to run the current microsoft wares, make a few more computer labs and put light weight linux distributions on them... Be sure to set them up well, so that they're faster and more reliable than the current microsoft offerings and you will get students using them in preference. Also offer a free or very cheap CD containing the same software.
Load a lot of OSS software on them, make sure the machines have a more complete stack than the windows based ones... At our university, only a small number of the windows and mac systems had photoshop due to cost, but all the linux boxes had gimp which was more than adequate for pretty much everyone outside of specialized graphic design classes.
Once you have some acceptance, are using open formats consider converting some of the newer workstations to dual boot configurations and let students choose what they want to use... If the proprietary format stumbling blocks have been overcome and the machines are configured properly, the linux option will be considerably quicker and more reliable making students choose it.
Above all, don't force the issue, give users a choice and prove why the OSS one is the better choice. Once you remove the proprietary format stumbling blocks, it's very hard to argue against OSS.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
How are you saving money when you are the only one using money and the rest uses blackboard?
Well, I'm not claiming that I am saving money, but neither will I contribute to wasting it simply because all the other bobble-heads make the conscious decision to do so.
I rent my own server space and am learning to admin Moodle myself.
One fewer person looting the public kitty may not profoundly affect the fact that looting goes on, but one need not be a looter just because everybody else is.
Just because the world choices (by&large) to use Microsoft doesn't mean you shouldn't learn about the other intellectual giants in World of software. I wouldn't be able to code if it wasn't for open source software, to be able to look inside the program's code and see how people smarter than me have put it together is what its all about! Especially at uni!!!!
Many people seem to underestimate Microsoft's true power. You can't fight them with money, you have to fight them with ideology.
Normally something rare and highly demanded is valuable. Microsoft, and many other software companies, create an artificial value with high costs and licensing.
Microsoft can then exert this power by 'reducing' the cost of something unnecessarily expensive because it doesn't cost jack shit for them to make another copy.
Schools are the best angle of attack for Microsoft. Everyone is already in the belief that you must know how to use MICROSOFT Word to make it in the business world, AbiWord and OpenOffice just "can't possibly cut it", should anyone even hear of them.
If Microsoft can make students feel comfortable in their software, it's an easy, virtually mandatory sell later.
But what Microsoft can't fight and what makes this fight even more difficult is these practices of theirs are immoral. They eliminate selection and competition. Most importantly, they take away the freedom of the user with their proprietary licenses.
It's a slow uptake, but it's not impossible to convince anyone that software freedom is an important thing to support. It's also not impossible to pray on peoples' emotions to make them switch.. or make them stay.
Logic is so, so important but few seem to accept that there's such a thing as rules to what makes things make sense. Fortunately, someone doesn't need logic to see the benefits in not getting fucked over and over again, they just need it made clear that they're getting fucked.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Universities are no longer about getting an education. It's mostly about vocational training. Getting a degree in something for career purposes - unless you're a trust fund baby.
This one is easy. Find out how much your university paid for the MS licenses over the last few contracts. Divide that by the number of students/users/relevant people to get a 'cost'. Then point out to the students, publicly and loudly, that because the University management felt compelled to enrich the billionaires at MS, they paid $xxxx more each year.
Then say there are just as good alternatives that will not only allow them to save money, but be more secure and take copies home to use on their home machines. Play up the lack of handcuffs and cost.
Make a list of application and total cost spent, then do it for application vs cost spent per student.
If that doesn't do it, people are dumb sheep that will never wake up. Shit, we have lost already.
-Charlie
Total cost of ownership is Microsoft's standard argument against FOSS competition. You save on license fees, but what does educating people (administrators, tech support, end users) about the differences between MS and FOSS products cost you?
There's a big possibility to spread FUD this way, but there's also a certain truth to it. Research this topic, it will invariably come up in one form or another.
Moodle does not do the same think as Blackboard. Course management is a very small part of what Blackboard does. For example, Blackboard provides distributed student authentication and the ability to interface with devices that aren't computers.
My university uses the system to authenticate student identification cards when they're swiped through doors and other resources around campus.
Moodle can't do anything similar to that.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
There are basically 2 choices out there, Blackboard and WebCT. Both of them rot, and there are certainly other FOSS applications that are better, but which one is used is NOT anything IT has the slightest bit of influence over.
The factors involved are mostly related to the faculty and administration of the school. Instructors have LARGE amounts of time and energy invested in learning whichever platform they're on now. Most of them are not amazingly competent in the computer field, and they have high demands on their time already.
Even a HINT of a suggestion that the faculty would have to say switch over all their classes to a new system would provoke instant rebellion, and in a struggle between IT and a faculty department head or dean, there is a 0.0000000% probability of IT winning.
Not to say change is impossible, but it has to come out of admin/faculty. IT is pretty powerless in a University environment.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
The only thing Blackboard sells is Blackboard (or WebCT if you like). They can't afford to give their stuff away for free.
The FOSS equivalent to Blackboard is Moodle. It's very good and many many schools use it. The on-line help forums are very good. If your school insists, you can buy a support contract.
www.moodle.org
ps. Our school used to spend tens of thousands of dollars on WebCT.
I can't really say anything about the cost of proprietary software, so I thought you might appreciate some information about what Open Source can be used for: My university has many thousands of students in all kinds of maths, engineering and technology-related fields. There's a custom zope installation for managing your schedule and course registration that's also used for other things like a secure central authentication gateway for professors who want to roll their own systems yet still need to interface with the main system. Every student has an account on an HP-UX Server, although this could also be done with cheap Linux servers. There's a public_html directory for your student website and a maildir for your mail in your home directory. There's also many cheap SUN/Intel terminals strewn across the entire campus (hallways, computer rooms, learning rooms, etc.) which can pxe boot into either kiosk mode (a browser that can only access the university's website) or pxe boot into a login screen. Once logged in, it will PXE boot yet again into an environment suitable for your profile or the location you're at (e.g. certain labs might have different kinds of environments). Your default environment is a basic KDE desktop system with your home directory mounted, kmail set up to read your .maildir, OpenOffice.org and many other productivity features.
Now that I have described it to some degree, I hope the advantages are becoming apparent. By utilizing the nature of Open Source software and the fact that you can freely combine them into something that suits your specific needs you can provide your students and staff with a high degree of flexibility. I can simply log in from any computer on campus or anywhere in the world and check my mails with any mail client I prefer, work from anywhere on my stuff, can forward X sessions so I can access restricted resources with Firefox running on the internal network but displayed on my computer at home, etc etc. The administrative costs are also pretty low since all you'll have to do is go and replace or install a cheap PXE booting terminal and it's ready to boot. Since there's only few PXE environments in use your ongoing maintenance cost is pretty much approaching zero.
All you need to implement this kind of setup is some resource planning and a few experienced UNIX admins to implement it and keep it running. No more expensive maintenance contracts with 20 different companies, no more fighting with vendors who are completely unable to have their proprietary stuff talk to each other and no more proprietary interfaces and protocols that prevent you from running a well-integrated infrastructure.
:/- spoon(_).
Frankly, open source might not be the right choice. While I am a BIG proponent of open source- the problem is there is no accountability by anyone (use at your own risk) and you have to hope that developers are still interested in the software you choose to use. In 3 years something bigger and better may come along and you are stuck trying to move everything over. As much as I hate Microsoft and their licensing, it is safe to say that they are going no where for a while. After all there is nothing more frustrating than initiating a overhaul of a system only to find out that the Open source software you want to use is acting funny on half the machines- and there is no vendor you can call except evilmonkeycoder@someeuroemail.edu and hope they get back in time.
What I would suggest you could roll out, though, seeing as you didn't mention Adobe, are open source things for graphics and design. The Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus all do things you can't do with MS Office, and I think are a great place to start.
Not foisting them upon graphics professionals, but having them there and available for anyone who wants them.
I admit I was lucky because this teacher was having problems setting up linux on the IBM servers, and I did it for him and got the chance to migrate the software environment for the whole college to *nix based platform.
My approach is this:
1) Provide a dual-boot environment for machines that concern the teachers, so they are not pissed off and at the same time the eager ones can check out the OSS alternative.
2) For students, provide a complete and customized OSS environment, the necessary software for lab work and if its totally inevitable, see if Wine can do the trick, and if not, then stick to Windows, so you are not hampering with the syllabi.
How I am going to persuade them (the students/other teachers):
1) Exposing their existing problems (reformatting, slow speeds, useless anti-viruses and the general disgust these things evoke).
2) Show them the stats and examples for OSS achievements and its increasing adoption rate across the world. Probably demonstrate clustering, and how these things get attention.
3) The money issue, which doesn't really concern them, as its not out of their pockets that the money is going, but the administration. But no risk in trying.
4) Fancy stickers and posters of tux etc.
Advantages: :)
1) I have observed students really don't participate much, windows at home, windows at university...so not much curiosity or willingness to play with the software. So by introducing OSS, that might change.
2) Contributions to the OSS world. The interested guys will play around, find bugs, do testing etc.
3)You gain experience, and the happy feeling.
4)Eliminating the redundant issues and the security risks, obviously.
Drawbacks:
1) The learning curve, depending on how well you customize the OSS and provide for some easy-to-understand, straightforward documentation.
2) The inertia factor, obviously. Well, if people start talking about it, undergrads et al, that could take care of it.
3) Availability of software, For eg, we here, have got used to Rational Rose, Maya and such, so providing alternatives (which are as good/user-friendly) for these is definitely an issue.
4) Troubleshooting the problems. Well, you just gotta be there when they arise. Probably training a few friends, undergrads might help too...spreading the information basically.
There's no OSS package that's even close to the functionality of Exchange. That, if nothing else, will ultimately be your show stopper, I'd bet. EVERYBODY uses Exchange/Outlook.
Other people have said it and I'll just reiterate: you can't win based on cost. That's a moot point.
So let's assume you can't get MS to step up with free licenses and you want to transition MS Office to OpenOffice. First you'll need to set up a training program for everyone on staff - you are shooting yourself in the foot if you don't. Next, you're still going to need Excel in some places because there's all kinds of nasty spreadsheets you don't know about using VB macros and COM plugins.
Finally, you're on Exchange? Good luck ripping Outlook out of anyone's hands. Do you have a BES server and Blackberry's? That'll be tough to ditch Exchange.
Take your OSS wins where you can. It's good to set ambitious goals, but you need to be realistic on what you can and can't do. A failed OSS conversion is much worse than not trying at all.
----- obSig
There has been a lot of good advice posted already, but I'll add what I can from my own experience. I was a computer science professor at a larger (~15,000) university for 20 years, and we used open source for virtually everything, but it was like pulling teeth to get the university to switch, mostly because of attitudes of people in the Data Center. The first thing, back in the 80's, was to get them to connect to the Internet. They thought their IBM Bitnet connectivity was all anyone would ever need. It was a very painful process, and people actually got fired
The fact that you asked about how to find out what the licenses cost suggest that you feel you can't just ask the people in your Data Center. If that is true, be prepared for a long guerilla war, but you will be able to make progress. As far as finding out what those things cost, you can't just get a standard price. Every contract is negotiated individually, with all sorts of mini-grants and bundling going on to help close the deal. If you can't get the information from the Data Center, try the Purchasing office. They may be more helpful.
In my experience, one department going its own way isn't real effective. I think that the Data Center spread the word that we were "different" and what worked for us "wouldn't work" for anyone else. Some people were puzzled as to why we never seemed to be bothered by viruses and worms, but they kept getting new stuff and it kept them happy.
One place where we managed to get a little purchase was when money got tight, and we pointed out that dropping some licenses might be preferable to laying people off. The good thing about that is that then they had to get some people with some open-source expertise, and that's how you really make progress, when there are some open-source advoctes inside the belly of the beast.
The most important thing is not to be impatient, and not to give up. When you get an opportunity, show the deans and vice presidents your $300 netbook, or whatever else, or show how effectively you can use open office and create documents that everyone else can use. They will start asking questions, and eventually the Data Center will have to come up with some real reasons why they go with proprietary products.
Good luck
I don't know what your university or it's mission is, but you need to consider the students you're supporting, their needs, and their goals.
Most university students are not CS students. Most university students see technology as a tool to accomplish other things. They want to write term papers and solve problem sets.
The vast majority of your incoming students are probably already familiar with Windows and MS Office. Also, anyone going into the business world will be expected to know how to use Office. Anyone doing anything with graphics will be expected to use Photoshop. Forcing them to switch to another technology will be disruptive. Forcing them to use non-standard tools may hurt them professionally. There are considerations here other than cost.
That said, I support OSS. Moving internal systems to Linux, running OSS alternatives for LDAP, etc., will probably save money with minimal impact. Replacing MS Exchange with sendmail may well be a good idea (especially if it opens up use of mobile devices that don't operate well with MS). I'm sure there are lots of places you can save money and possibly get better tech out of the deal.
Just make sure you've given good care and concern before you swap the Windows, MS Office, and Photoshop on all the machines in the public computer lab for Ubuntu, OO.o, and GIMP.
I recently started a new job in local government, who is actually quite pro open source. BSD, Solaris, Linux all welcome.
However, I realised, as you may, it is about the bigger picture.
It is all very well putting forward new solutions, but you need think about it in this way:
How much would it cost to retrain all the users. Retraining several thousand users won't be cheap.
Would the users accept such a notion, or are they very anti change
What is in there at present is a known quantity. It works. Why should they change.
Do the IT people have the skillset across the board to support any new system.
Who can provide support for the application? That is huge in large companies.
Deployments have to be thought out, designed, planned, tested. You need to realise this takes resource, resource that is not always readily available. Breaking several thousand (or even several dozen) will turn people right off your solution PDQ
Thats not to say you can't do it. The way I would play it, is single out a single app to start with. One where the OSS solution is a real good one. Perhaps offer Firefox alongside IE as a start. Design, package and test it well. Then deploy it to a few guinea pigs who are willing to try it. Get feedback, incorporate feedback, re-release to more people etc etc.
Over time you may get a foothold, but bare in mind you will have a huge fight with Exchange and Office. You will find those almost impossible to replace, at least with current OSS solutions. Fancy retraining 4000 users to use thunderbird and IMAP rather than monkey click, monkey do style exchange chimps. My close friend who works, lives and breathes OSS isn't even attempting to change the Exchange setup at the Uni network he inherited.
Also bear in mind management fear change. They may get MS in to talk to you, aka give you the FUD talk.
We have enough issues migrating from Suse to Debian to make us think very carefully about what we are doing and this is only one server.
Be careful!
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
heh, it'd be a nice idea - shame about the general MS brainwash that the IT departments tend to go through . they use MS products because they pay for them - with the belief that this then gives them to chance to report bugs and GET THEM FIXED.
I know of many Universities that HAVE Open Source software in various strategic/key places and are under constant pressure to get the stuff replaced with that 'oh so shiny' MS GUI veneer. Pity.
How and why you want to do this is the main thing - licence costs, TCO and ROI are all very much
important - but think of the undergraduates that might use this stuff - what will they see when they go into the real workplace? OpenOffice or MS Office?
Open source has its place in the University - but maybe not the user-facing part of IT
If you set yourself up as "the open source guy", you'll frighten people and have a constant struggle on your hands. Besides, wholesale conversions generally come with big problems anyway, and people will blame open source for everything.
Instead, do things gradually. Start by introducing specific FOSS applications on Windows. Start offering Linux, but don't force anybody. Collect data on how much money and effort it takes to support Windows vs Linux. Migrate some server side applications to Linux and FOSS. Etc.
Look at hosted, platform neutral apps, like Google Apps or Zoho. There's a good cost argument to be made for them.
A university is supposed to educate a child as to the world of software
No it's not, it's supposed to give an academic qualification. If you want a vocational one, fuck off to a vocational college.
not just that which you are ideologically in favor of.
Certainly, it should be about providing all of the alternatives, and demonstrating the advantages/disadvantages.
Do you think you are good for humanity just sheltering children from MS-Word? I doubt it.
So do I, but letting them try other things is certainly a good plan.
Gimp has no place in professional graphic design and I hope it stays that way. I'm sick of non-graphic designers trying to tell me it's just as good as Photoshop when it's not even close.
I know nothing about university computing, but I know a bit about K-8 and much of it is probably transferable.
1. Your licenses are almost certainly academic licenses. They used to be, and probably are, dirt cheap, you can possibly get a price by calling an educational software distributor ... maybe. The big cost in new versions is the people cost of reconfiguring/upgrading all sorts of badly written, poorly documented software that turns out not to be compatible with Windows 7 or whatever.
2. Your existing Microsoft licenses are already paid for, so the issue really is more like whether the University is going to continue to buy new MS software or just settle in with the existing versions. There's actually a pretty good business case for telling folks, "No more MSOFFICE upgrades ever". AFAICS, the Office side of MS has been shuffling deckchairs for a decade. And Open Office mostly works about as well and is mostly compatible.
3. The OS is a different issue. The college is going to continue buying PCs no doubt. After a while it is going to be increasingly difficult to buy them with the same version of Windows that your facility's software is compatible with. Somehow, this red queen's race is your fault. You are not permitted to opt out of the race just because your existing software configuration works. Absolutely not. Get with the program and break something.
4. You probably can not switch to a Unix, no matter how appealing it might be. Unless all 6000 or so PCs (I'm guessing, but it's surely a lot) at the school are identical, you are going to find that the people costs of getting anything (and yes, that includes Ubuntu) to run with dozens of different hardware configurations are very high.
5. It's something of a miracle that WINE works at all. That said, a lot of stuff does not run acceptably in WINE. Are virtual machines an acceptable alternative? I honestly don't know. If so, that's probably the route you want to go down. You may want to use them anyway if Windows 7 or 8 or 9 breaks all sorts of applications.
6. Most teachers are going to have existing lessons plans and many of them depend on specific software products working in a particular way. Producing the teaching materials took them a lot of time, and they are not going to thank you if you force them to change their teaching materials capriciously.
7. The administrative side of the University no doubt uses hundreds of badly written, poorly documented programs -- many of which are barely compatible with Windows. Don't be surprised if you find some MSDOS or Windows 3.1 machines in dark corners that are fired up twice a year to produce some strange report generated by a program written in 1988 and required by some mysterious government agency. You can probably get the stuff to run in Windows XP or Unix. But my advice would be -- don't try.
I'm rambling. Goodby and Good Luck. You're going to need it.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Right.. because we all know that kids that play with OSS become murderers..?
Ever used reiserfs?
I work at a large private university and to my knowledge maintain the largest network of Linux/UNIX systems on campus.
I'd like to make an argument that going open source would save the university money and think through a gradual transition process to open source software (starting small, with something like replacing Endnote with Zotero, then MS Office with OpenOffice.org, and so on)
You're doing it wrong. Rather than gradually transition systems away from MSFT and Windows only solutions you need to give them the option to use both. As someone mentioned above it's not about cost but about what people know how to use and are more comfortable with.
What you haven't mentioned is which systems are you targeting? Universities have hundreds of departments and each have their own unique set of computational requirements.
For example, physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists, some chemists, structural biologists, and some electrical engineers can't live without Linux/UNIX systems. Why don't you offer to maintain systems for users like these (you'll need to hire other UNIX people, believe me this isn't a one person job). In fact this is my job and I have other helpers.
However, guys in business & finance, other arts & sciences dept. mechanical engineering and perhaps other engineering fields, and administrators need certain proprietary Windows apps.
I know some people at local universities who have switched machines that were just being used for checking email, web browsing, doing online research, or systems in the library for doing catalog lookups to NX thin clients that connect to a remote Linux desktop.
Another option is to provide a link on Windows desktops in computer labs or in areas where they need Windows apps (e.g. depts mentioned above) that starts Linux in VirtualBox (or your VM of choice) when the user clicks on them. I'm assuming all the users have a centralized storage area, you'll need to integrate the Linux and Windows home directories but it's doable.
The idea is that the curious people will hopefully start using Linux and you won't need to drive MSFT off campus because the users will do it for you.
Bah, OOffice and MS-Word are sufficiently identical that learning to use one makes it quite easy to learn the other one.
But there is a 'good for humanity' reason to shield children from MS-Office: file formats, OOffice has always used an open file formats, Microsoft has always tried to avoid open file format as much as possible, that is a significant difference.
You have a very laudable goal. I faced a situation with a small private school for high functioning children with learning disabilities. I stepped in as a consultant (A friend of mine is on the board of directors and I did this as volunteer work) to fix the situation when the system admin was terminated. The coffers for the IT budget were nearly drained from an expensive, maintenance intensive setup. The school was in such bad shape financially as a result of misspent money on IT that admin staff took a voluntary furlough. All grade and student information data was archived and copies exported to csv files. After this was done, we shut down the infrastructure for a re-design using Fedora (Gnome Desktop), CentOS (File/Directory/Email Server), OpenBSD (Security/Routing), and FreeBSD (Application/Database Server.) By the end of the summer, using the strengths of Linux and BSD, we had a fully kerberized infrastructure that met the requirements of the school. Here are the technologies we used: Squid Web proxy, MIT Kerberos, CentOS Directory Server, Joomla CMS (replaced that crappy smart board application), Apache 2.2 and Tomcat, MySQL, Postfix, OpenBSD Spamd and RIP. There are others too. This project was not easy but wildly successful but the success was, for a large part, due to the cooperation, enthusiasm, and dedication of the staff. Staff realized that there were going to be changes and not all changes would please everyone but this was in the name of saving a school. We have been up and running for the past 8 mos without a hiccup. Previously, major outtages were a weekly, if not daily occurance. I was successful because I involved as many people as I could. Even my most adamant teacher recognizes that Windows is not the be all, end all.
If your university is like any I've been involved with; it's the faculty that runs the show. If they want something, it happens, if not, forget about it.
To those /.'s that'll start with the "what about the students?" argument; that's no different than the "think about the children" ones made outside of academia.
In short, come up with solutions that will help the powers that run the university and get their support. Without that you're dead in the water.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
"A university is supposed to educate a child as to the world of software,"
A university is supposed to educate YOUNG ADULTS, not (with a few prodigal exceptions) "children".
Treating young adults like children fucks them up thoroughly and is cruel because it does not prepare them for life.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
We don't do anything like that.
It is good to know that yours does, but we're a lowest-common-denominator state university system that not too long ago caught public flak over buying some pretty awful records management software (cough, cough, PeopleSoft). Remarkably few instructors I come into contact with use Blackboard for anything other than a Powerpoint delivery system, unfortunately; if that's how you're using it, you'd be better off with something free.
But, hey -- it's great you don't suck like we do! :-D
But if you're not in a position to know how much your university spends on software and be able to compare it to how much revenue the university has, you're not in a position to really make a change to open source. Second, thinking of my dealings with fellow university students (I'm an OSS using university student as well), I know many of them would rather use the MS/proprietary version that just works than deal with often buggy open source software that's not always compatible or has bugs left and right. Your university has to deal with the outside world, which is still deeply entrenched in MS Office, unless you're going to show all your students how to export from Open Office to an MS Office format, expect a lot of complaints. Granted, Open Office isn't as buggy as some things, but if you have engineering students who need a good CAD program, don't count on finding a good open source program for them. I wish you luck, but you're really fighting the tide here.
The OP said "influence," not "dictate." Clearly the OP isn't the top IT honcho at this university, but he/she doesn't claim to be.
For someone who really was the top manager in charge of IT at a university, my advice would be to start laying the groundwork over the next few years via the hiring process. Every time you interview someone for an IT position, make sure that one of your criteria is that the person has broad problem-solving skills, broad interests, and at least some academic qualifications in actual CS, as opposed to someone who just has MS certs. The school where I teach is pretty much the kind of MS monoculture the OP describes, except that there are some pockets of resistance in the fine arts division where they still use macs, despite intense pressure to standardize on Windows. The huge problem is that a lot of the IT staff doesn't know anything about Linux or OSS, and has never used Linux or OSS. Some of them are curious and willing to learn new things. Others are not. It doesn't help that the ratio of staff to boxen is on the low side, which tends to make them resist any complication such as supporting another OS. In this kind of environment, hiring even one tech who uses Ubuntu at home could make a huge difference.
Find free books.
We ran GIMP on our laptops, we started doing some work in it. One day we installed GIMP on a SGI o2 to show a professor. That professor loved and and showed another. They realized that for the price of Photoshop they got something free, easy and better (IMHO).
Shortly there after we were showing other students how to use it. I'm not sure what became of it's usage there but somethings you have to start at the grass roots.
Sig Cig what is difference
Universities are there to educate adults. Perhaps you regard 18-22 years olds as "children", but most university departments certainly do not. Those that do tend to have a very poor attitude towards education and the student body in general.
May the Maths Be with you!
Yeah, well, I'm still waiting for somebody to realize that Critical Thinking should be a mandatory highschool course. Face it - all available evidence suggests that the last thing we want is to train kids in "advanced" thought.
Like any other good idea, you have to present it so the powers that be believe it's their idea.
Start using the free options on your own workstation.
My workstation runs Slamd64 (Slackware for 64 bit). I use OpenOffice for all the documents people send around. Why the company directory has to be an Excel spreadsheet is beyond me. I use GIMP to edit photos. I did a beautiful job of editing a photo of Thor (from Stargate::SG1) into a photo of a datacenter hallway, and adjusted a few signs to make it look more like a secret military base. Make sure people can see you working. If you hide out in a back room, then it all becomes a mysterious thing, not something open to them.
Get a few coworkers who are open to the idea to do the same thing.
Mention in passing that by running open source, you didn't need any licensing, and with that you saved X (and give the equivalent in Windows based commercial software).
You need to remind them at particular times, like when the management is working out their annual budgets, that each desk that runs open sourced software is saving money.
You must be a shining example. Don't be caught down in single user mode. If you want to do kernel upgrades, do it after hours when no one will see.
When someone runs into a bug or crashing problem in the commercial software, be a little flip. "Oh, you paid X for that, and it doesn't work. Here, I can do it for you on mine, it doesn't crash. Oh and mine is all free"
When they look at the budget, see that they'll need $100,000 in new licenses, and then see that there is an option that will save $100,000, they will likely come to you for more information.
Pushing the issue almost never helps.
An example was a DB server that I ran once. It was a very expensive Dell server, with Solaris x86 on it. It had problems, but at least I got some practice with Solaris x86. :) They were all excited about the support. "But we can call Dell, and they'll have it fixed within 4 hours." When they day came that a drive died, it happened on a Friday night, and we didn't have a replacement until Monday. The biggest problem happened during a memory upgrade. The guy bent on using this configuration had Sun and Dell on the phone, because the upgrade wouldn't work. It turned out that this version of Solaris couldn't handle all the memory.
I pushed him off onto one of our generic SuperMicro machines running Slackware (generic in that we had a whole bunch for serving web sites). It was faster, on cheaper equipment. The drives were IDE, where the Dell had SCSI. If a drive died, I could go to CompUSA/BestBuy/etc and pick one up cheap. Where can you just go and pick up a SCSI drive? If a server died, we'd just yank the drives, and put them into another machine.
At the time, he insisted that SCSI was the only way to go. (save your preaching). I didn't tell him what the machine was that I migrated to. I just told him that I had a spare that I could have him up in 30 minutes on. I brought him up, and it worked perfectly. More importantly, it could use all the memory available, AND ran faster. Queries ran in about 1/10 the time, so everyone was happy.
It wasn't a perfect solution. We only had two drives in the SuperMicro machine, and they wanted RAID5.
We looked at the cost of the Dell. Something like $40,000. We looked at the cost of the Supermicro. $3,000. We looked at replacement cost of the Dell with newer hardware, and a newer copy of Solaris x86. High 5 digits.
This battle took two years. Two years of me saying "But these are better and cheaper", and when they day came that I was forced to prove it, I proved it in 30 minutes. We bought a better SuperMicro 1u machine, that we could run RAID5 on (4 drive b
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
So, for example, try running something non mission critical such as the Alumni database, or a webcasting server or a software mirror service on a FOSS box. Then people start to say how fast it is/doesn't break down. Then try something with some bite in it - maybe a read-only Samba server. Then maybe a read/write Samba server for a small group, which is linked to AD. Make the move in small steps, a bit like the Embrace & Extend strategy.
as many have already stated, MS or the MS Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will drop prices on MS software to thwart your efforts. Find places where they can't or don't play and one place is in energy efficiencies via multi-head multi-user configurations. http://www.userful.com/ wraps this up really nicely if you don't want to, or don't have the skills, configure it yourself. Not only does this provide nice energy efficiencies, it also can increase computer access with little extra money because you don't have to purchase a whole new computer for another workstation.
Look at all the computer labs and libraries first. And if there are some Microsoft apps needed, how about running Windows in a few virtual machines and installing something like VMwares VDI client on the multi-head systems. It might turn Windows into a managed application layer.
And you know energy efficiency is all the rage these days so you've got that marketing already done for you.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Speaking as a person who works for a university myself, I'm involved in an open source project called Kuali (http://kuali.org) which aims to provide open source solutions for higher education institutions (community colleges, universities, whatever). Not all products are complete, but it's definitely worth checking out / waiting for.
if you aren't in a position to know what the university is paying for all these licenses than you're not a in position to have a serious effect on what does or does not get used in their labs.
We're stuck with PeopleSoft too. I feel your pain.
A lot of places are using Blackboard for what I described, though. It's pretty excellent lock-in, but on the other hand it actually works very, very well.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Somebody mentioned it briefly but I want to elaborate on the subject of students. If I am not mistaken, most universities hand out a "welcoming pack" with stuff like free candy bars and magazine subscriptions in them, alongside general info about the university, the faculties and the libraries.
1) create 4GB (persistent) ubuntu live thumbdrives with OO.org, gimp, FF etc.
2) put them in said packs with brief explanation
3) ???
4) prophet!
Do this for several years and you might really get some people into FOSS.
Furthermore, students are locked to MS Office because some professors (and university staff in general) really insist on the .doc-format. Solve this problem by teaching the faculty!
An anecdote: I am a student at the University of Cambridge. I used to be member of a small college where I used the printers in the library. Unfortunately the machines in this library (Windows and OsX) did not have OO.org on it, so I had to convert my files to pdf before printing (last minute changes were out of question). Several times I asked our BOFH to put OO.org on these machines but he never did. Reason why he didn't do it? Because he is a total douchebag.
I am at a medium sized university (~24K students.) I have worked here for over 25 years.
You have to understand that a university is not a business. Ultimately, they are not steered or directed like a business. If you wish to help your institution, you need to understand it.
Universities exist for 3 grand goals:
1) Self preservation. A university exists, to continue to exist.
2) Illumination. A university exists to light the world. To make the world a better place.
3) Education. A university exists to create thinking, critical minds.
A university must balance all three of these objectives. It may chose to favor 1 over the others in the short term, but in the long term, all three must balance.
All universities have a core of leadership. This core has the greatest influence at a university. These are the people who are giving their lives to the university. If you pay attention, you can learn who they are. If you want to be one of them, you have to tell your bosses: "I will work here even if you don't pay me." And you have to mean it. Then you have to back it up with a decade or so of valuable service.
So, if you wish to change things at your institution, you need to rephrase your discussion. It can't be, FOSS is cheap, easy and secure. It must be: We can use FOSS to make a better university. Be prepared to talk about it. A lot. Be prepared to demonstrate over and over.
I have been trying to steer my university towards FOSS for the last 10 years. So far, my greatest success has been that I have influenced many of the next generation of staff to use FOSS tools.
Now, people at my institution have learned that when you ask a proprietary problem solver to solve a new problem, you end up purchasing a new tool. When you ask a FOSS problem solver to solve a new problem, you get a month or so of activity, followed by a solution to the problem. You also get a more capable FOSS tool user.
Universities REALLY value capable minds. Having a process that creates more capable minds is a powerful long term strategy for increasing FOSS adoption.
Finally, it is impossible to overvalue the benefit of an active, motivated FOSS user group. Everyplace is different, but your greatest bang-per-buck might be to make sure that there are cookies and pop at every FOSS user group meeting.
Miles
1. If in any doubt about your in-house capability to manage such a migration project, bring in an outside contractor to do new installations.
Know what you are setting out to achieve by such a migration, and why. Assess where cost savings can actually be made.
Remember that in a University, you pay ACADEMIC license prices, which are actually quite low, relative to the full commercial price, and are often negotiated to be even lower with the vendor.
You will have to justify your decision to migrate on the basis of migration cost, remaining lifespan of existing systems, in relation to continued licensing costs.
Set a policy that all new deployments in chosen areas will be open source based. There is unlikely to be any cost benefit in migrating existing hardware to open source OSs.
Use the threat of open source migration to squeeze better deals of vendors for anything you don't migrate. You can get huge discounts.
2. Migrate your servers first. The cost saving here will help to support your decision in other areas. There is nearly always a cost saving in moving away from Windows servers (when properly managed). Less hardware is required in my experience, and once installed, there seems to be a much lower administrative overhead.
There is little excuse for Windows servers in a production environment for any purpose, these days.
3. Identify the best candidate areas, where open source software is lightly to be most welcomed, and best supported (ie. engineering, computer science, maths, physics, ...) Windows is not generally necessary in such areas at all, and it should be easy to get all required third party software from your vendors.
Most specialist software will continue to be licensed at the same cost anyway, so you will likely only save Windows/Office license costs on new hardware.
3. Evaluate what software is missing in the open source software stack, and for each subject area, put in place replacements. Where no suitable replacement can be found, you will either have to pressure your vendors to deliver, deploy on WINE, or leave Windows in place for these particular areas.
Good luck. Managed properly, you will make significant savings. Particularly on the server side.
Most Universities that I have visited are now running a substantial proportion of open source software. Even, when I was at university about 6 years ago, we used a mixture of Solaris, Linux, and a few Windows machines for word processing tasks (which have all since all been replaced by Linux workstations)
Lets cut to the chase. Open source software is great and sometimes meets the needs of businesses but when you hit academia that's a WHOLE other world.
1) Academia needs to be able to access proprietary and non-proprietary documents. Most government agencies are NOT open source. Open Office does not "work" well with a lot of Word Doc's, newer Excel sheets and definitely not Access databases.
2) Blackboard on the other hand is about to get a RUDE awakening. NCSU, UNC, DUKE and a few other universities have all started their own open source implementations of Moodle (Blackboards competitor). Blackboard costs HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A YEAR for the license. Moodle costs $0. Unfortunately support for Moodle is still in it's infancy for products like MediaSite (Sonic Foundry E-Learning, communication stuff).
3) Learning Curves. There's no better way to piss people off and make you position "temporary" by forcing FACULTY and Administration to use other tools that they have to re-learn how to do things. Also, there's a great deal of documentation written (by your own internal groups) involving "how-to guides" etc that don't explain how to do it in OpenOffice.
4) Can open source solutions do everything that your groups need. A lot of statistical analysis, data mining and recording happens and is exported, imported between systems. A BUTTLOAD of scientific equipment will export to non compliant documents that Office tends to be lenient to where OpenOffice is not. (Water Sampling equipment form HCOR for example).
Be very VERY careful and instead of bulldozing it in... start offering it. Identify the benefits that a user would experience. In some situation it's cost... (that's a big one right now with most universities having a hiring freeze etc). The other is no licensing, so no management of that rascal (Auditors love you). Take it slow and it will work.
We used Blackboard at Cornell. At Yale we use a piece of open source software called ClassesV2. You might want to take a look at it.
Do you have business units (Development, Finance, etc.) using software that depends on MS Office plugins or add-ons? Do you have academic software that integrates with Excel? Are there departments running academic software that only runs under Windows (ArcGIS, for example). Does the school rely on the student version of SPSS through the bookstore? That's Windows-only. There are a ton of other examples. And there aren't (and never will be) open-source equivalents across the board.
If they can't get rid of all the back-end stuff, remember that it's your Microsoft license, if you've got the student desktop option as well as the faculty/staff one, that gets you your Core CALs for a bunch of different Microsoft server software. By the way, the Microsoft agreement also gives you a massive discount on Windows Server, SQL Server, etc. If some of that stuff is still required for critical applications, you're going to need to factor in open licensing with SA costs. Or whatever they're calling it this year.
And again, if they can't get rid of all the Microsoft stuff, it may not be worth their while to deal with two sets of software. At 5,500 people, there may not be enough IT support staff to make that viable - they can support one or the other, but not both. And yes, Linux and OpenOffice requires support. If it takes a few extra staff to deal with a split environment, it's likely to eat up a huge amount of the savings.
Unless you can show a massive savings, which you may not be able to, faculty aren't going to want to learn new software. It's not their focus or job interest, and they likely won't want to hear about it.
You're not going to win on the desktop on ideology. If you really want to do this, target specific departments or offices that are already inclined to be interested. You won't save any money, but if you're right, you'd be offering them a higher level of service. That at least gives you a local example of what can be done.
I am the OSS IT person at our 100% MS small college. I know for a fact what we pay for MS licenses. The poster doesn't have a prayer in hell. Not knowing all the specifics my bet is that his college pays all of 10k a year or less for all of their MS licenses - Desktop, server, DB, etc. 10k is chump change. I will go further to add that I bet they shell out more to Adobe for software in a year then to MS. He not only has to get them to write off MS but get every IT person to replace their skill set. THAT is where the real cost is. "Switch to F/OSS it is cheaper!" "It will cost 10 years worth of MS money to retrain even our server guys - no thanks" Yeah, yeah, I know REAL IT guys can turn on a dime to any technology. A college is a ship though, and they don't turn on a dime.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
If you don't know how much your University is spending in licensing for Microsoft software, then you're in no position to influence them about what software they use.
It's telling that almost all of the examples of what to look out for in this thread feature using proprietary software instead of FLOSS.
In your "well-rounded education" I see you framing the debate as choosing between Microsoft's software and Apple's. Where's the education about software freedom that would teach students not to get caught in any proprietors trap? All proprietors want lock-in, in doesn't matter which proprietor you choose (this too is the catch with freedom of choice; once the choices are narrowed to a choice between masters, you are guaranteed to lose your software freedom). I think much of this discussion suffers from having eliminated so much of what matters about schools and making citizens that it's easy to convince people they can afford to focus on which master they should serve under (Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, etc.).
The grandparent poster's comment makes the same error: "sheltering" from Microsoft Word is a good thing. Most people need a grounding in word processors, not in being branded. They use so little of what any word processor has to offer, it hardly matters what they use insofar as functions go. If they're handing in paper, even moreso. If they're handing in documents, instructors should accept a variety of formats which includes output from software poor students can get gratis, inspect, share, and run as they see fit. No proprietary software offers all of this only free software does.
Others are speaking as if OpenOffice.org is to be feared, thus positioning Microsoft Office as a safer choice. Apparently without regard to how incompatible Microsoft's previous software has been with files generated by still earlier versions of Microsoft programs (such as Microsoft Office 97 not reliably loading files generated by earlier versions of Microsoft Word and Excel), and the pointless (from users' perspective) switch to their so-called "open" format. Schools ought not be a bolster for monopoly abuse and proprietorship.
The most fundamental mission of schools is to teach people to be good citizens and good neighbors, not just basic facts and useful skills. That should be their agenda and they should make choices commensurate with that agenda.
Digital Citizen
If you were *actually* in a position to influence their purchasing decisions, you would already know what they're currently purchasing and how much they're paying for it. You would certainly know that site license pricing is highly variable depending on how much the software company in question wants your business.
One word - Access
Loads of univ folk use Access for database work, so the change isn't going to happen.
But when those students get released out on their own and on their resumes what do they put on their resumes as experience in office applications? OpenOffice? Right. Geeks/IT people aside, most people don't know what OpenOffice or Google Spreadsheet is nor care. They just know that the resume doesn't say Microsoft Office, Word, and/or Excel. It may not necessarily eliminate them, but it also doesn't do anything to help them. You do a great disservice to the students when you don't prepare them for the real world. And the real business world is dominated by Microsoft Windows and Office.
What you want to do is teach word processing techniques. Which, for someone who came out of any high school - competently, is a couple of hours of work, at most.
I disagree. Anyone who thinks they can learn to properly format a grant application, journal article, etc with just two hours of training on MS Word is kidding themselves. There are businesses in New York that send their staff to three solid weeks of training before they're allowed to start word processing. A month before they're allowed to use Excel.
Word processing is intuitive. Everyone can figure out some way to indent, bold, etc. But doing it properly so your Table of Contents reflects your headings, and your margins are specific and not willy nilly...that takes real application-specific training.
Right.. because we all know that kids that play with OSS become murderers..?
Ever used reiserfs?
... and how many other OSS projects are there, where their leaders don't turn out to be murderers?
Anything can be called significant for small sample sizes.
You won't be able to win this with the money argument. Microsoft will swarm all over you, giving free stuff away. They have a fund just to give away free licenses to anyone who's even thinking about trying open source.
They give free license (or outrageously cheap site license) for universities. *BUT* not everyone is getting the softwares for free !!!!
No, since you're a university, the way to approach this is to let the undergrads explore.
Also undergrads *DON'T* benefit from all softwares. Most often the students ends-up torrenting their office suites off pirate bay.
Does the University really wants to indirectly encourage software piracy ?!?
Usually, the licensing agreements with stuff like MSDNAA are :
- University gets a dead cheep site license as part of MSDNAA.
- Professors, teaching staff, etc... *DO GET* the right to obtain all these softwares *also for home*.
but
- Students *DO NOT* obtain license for MS-Office for home/personal laptops. They officially have *TO PAY* to get the same software that everyone else is getting for free and that everyone has declared necessary. (Usually, the students actually end up pirating it).
MS-Office is the critical point here.
Microsoft think that, as long as they have seeded the nest (the university) and the important influencial figure (the people giving the lessons), MS-Office will get automatically adopted as the de-facto standart and every body will start using it.
Student will probably get pirated copies anyway, so there's no point in trying to give them free licenses. At least they are getting used to it, they get brainwashed into the notion that there's nothing else worth beside MSO (like all other sheeple), and probably 5-6 years down the line when they finish studying and enter the professional world, they will ask at their workplace to use whatever is the then MSO du jour.
The strategy to bring open source into the university should work on two points :
- not only going open source can save licensing money in the long run.
- open source is also a way for the *students* to get the necessary software for home.
Currently OpenOffice.org is functionally equivalent to MSO. (And is indeed used as a replacement in several public administrations here around in Europe)
At least, even if the university refuses to switch open source, the *students* might be interested getting it for home because it's free, it's compatible with MSO to open university's documents, is functionally equivalent, and even is currently EASIER to migrate to from older MSO 2003 than migrating to MSO 2007, as the OOo's classical interface is closer, unlike 2007's criticized ribbons.
So even if the university refuse to change its stance you have a way to encourage a significant part of the university's population to switch to open source.
Now you can try to use these arguments with the university :
- if they go with MSO, not only do they have to pay (a small) site license, but they are using a solution that WON'T be accessible to the students outside the computer labs (and everyone has seen how currently there are lots of laptops everywhere. Modern students tend to use much more a laptop they carry everywhere, rather than going to the uni computer labs).
- if they go with OOo, the licensing is cheaper (free). They also will be offering a solution that absolutely everyone can use : teacher, staff, university computer labs, students at home, on their laptops... all this regardless of the system : Windows, Mac OS (very popular on student laptops in some richer region) or the customized Linux wich are the latest craze in the netbook segment.
*AND* as an icing on the top of the cake, the current version of OOo will require much less retraining as it looks much more like classical MSO than latest MSO. This is a really ironic argument given the fact that usually Microsoft have always been fast to point retraining as "hidden short-term costs" against ope
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Cost in my opinion will not be an effective argument to sway away from Propriety Software. Chances are, those license agreements are the most cost-efficient options for your university. Remember too what else is coming with those licensing costs (support), and bringing in FOSS will increase the in-house cost for those areas.
Also, some software is simply a bad choice to change to FOSS in a educational environment, not because of the quality, but because employers have an expectation for a certain level of proficiency.
If your looking into FOSS applications, I would suggest services core to your university, such as email. We're testing a Zimbra solution right now that our ISP provides to replace our Sun email system for my university (26,000 students)
Note to Mods.
Sarcasm is NOT trolling. TYVM.
Being an over-reactive loud-mouth is, however.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
After all, it would be down right un-American to not work my ass off to help cloth and feed a bunch of rich assholes!
So, while we are at it then, do you want to do something about universities owning huge patent portfolios paid for by your tax dollars, while at the same time raising tuition faster than even the price of gasoline?
This is my sig.
If you succeed, I'd love to be there on the day that the BSA shows up for a software audit because you haven't paid your Microsoft tariff of late and that they are just so darn sure that you absolutely cannot live without Microsoft software.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Wait, so you are "position to potentially influence future software purchasing decisions" at your place of employment, but you aren't in a position to find out what you are currently spending on Office licenses? Why are you asking Slashdot? You should be able to find out EXACTLY how much your organisation has been spending. If you can't find out from them, then I seriously doubt you have the power to change anything anyways.
I think you mean that sarcasm isn't always trolling. In this case, it was - GP didn't address the point, which is that at least some exposure to Word is going to be necessary to ensure students know what to expect.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Why not have a linux lab while maintaining the main Windows network? It'll be too much work to get people to change to something they're not used to -- and a lot of professors may not be very computer savvy. A linux lab could allow people to get into OSS, provide Computer Science majors a taste of a real OS, and would let those who want to try linux do so without having it forced on them.
Yes. Like Eclipse. But Eclipse dosen't crash every 5 seconds like MS Visual Suckdicko does.
But the real question is -- and this question is appropriately addresses MS users' stubborn refusal to try alternatives as well -- are you all too damn lazy to write on envelopes and labels yourself, you slovenly fucks?
With that in mind, you should focus on how to provide the highest value IT services for your University. That means building a business case around any changes that you proposed, including the upfront and ongoing costs of transition, training, and support. As many others have noted, "free" software isn't free.
Your University has thousands of users, including a broad diversity of stakeholders, including executive and administrative staff, faculty, and students. All of them expect to have systems up and running 24x7. Any lengthy downtime in a critical system must be avoided.
So what should you do?
Of course, there is no assurance that these methods will work, or that proprietary vendors won't try an end run around your efforts. But I've found these techniques to be an effective guerrilla marketing approach in the past. Good luck.
Until something along the lines of GPO's are available, Linux can never compete with MS as a desktop OS. However, plenty of OS software that runs on MS Windows certainly is viable. OpenOffice being one of them - but even then, we (where I work) have a number of apps that depend on MS Office applications and will not run on OO - so there for one is why we can't simply ditch MS software across the board.
I feel that it's this sort of thinking that allows Microsoft to be the dominant vendor at all.
People say "Let's not use Linux because Windows is the dominant thing in the world", creating an viscous loop.
...and unless you are a high-level administrator (no, I'm not talking system administrator, but at the VP level), you stand a close to zero chance of winning the war. Oh, you might win a few skirmishes here and there (and I highly recommend picking those battles you know you can win), but there is simply little chance of converting a MS shop to an OSS shop.
Why? Because the suits are the ones who make the final purchasing decisions. And Microsoft, Blackboard, et al will not stand by idly while you attempt to dismantle their stronghold in your organization. They will send their hired guns to talk sense into your bosses, and if by chance you have a strong argument, they will be prepared and authorized to cut pricing and increase support. I tried this with Blackboard on our campus: I was succcessful in getting about 1000 students/semester enrolled in Moodle, but it was an uphill battle all the way, and by the time I left the campus for another teaching position, I was no closer to converting the college to Moodle (other than our little oasis) than I was 3 years previous.
A bit of advice: Don't try to convert the world to OSS. It simply won't happen (and you just need to look at the history of OSS to figure that out). Select some choice battles, battles you know you can win, and focus on those. Chances are, by the time you win those battles, you'll be ready to move on to something else.
When you are in a hole, first stop digging. Make sure that when you use new software that it supports Linux/Mac/Windows.
...systematically installing Debian on every University machine in the dead of night, and then breaking the CD drives.
We'll also need to take out the enemy's ability to network install Windows (again). I am, at this very moment, working on code disable the bios PXEs.
Guerilla tactics...
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Just because somebody things GIMP blows chunks compared to Photoshop doesn't make them a paid Microsoft shill. If anything it would make them a paid Adobe shill, wouldn't it? I mean, why would Microsoft try to promote Adobe products when it is trying to compete with them (MS Blend, Silverlight, etc..)? Kinda silly assumption, you think?
So really, who are you shilling for? The FSF? I wouldn't put it past them.
Your first statement is 100% correct. The rest of your post just screws the pooch. Example: I have three sons. Son #1 attends college, and takes something called "computer science". The kid can do a lot of magic - on a microsoft machine, IF it is set up for him. He has little concept of hardware, how the operating system works, or how to fix stuff when it's broken. Put him on a *nix box, and he's lost. Son #2 has no pertinence to this discussion. Son #3 is _almost_a_nix_nut_ That is, he likes windows, sometimes, for certain things. But, he GENERALLY prefers open source alternatives. He can field strip a laptop (blindfolded?) in no time at all, R&R faulty components, reinstall anything, configure it, and hand it back to the user, ready to run. Believe me - I strongly question the value of Son #1's higher education. I feel he has been turned into precisely the sort of proprietary zombie that Microsoft loves.... In summary - it is the duty of the university to EDUCATE students in COMPUTER SCIENCE, then let the kid run with what they learn. They shouldn't be sheltering children from the REAL WORLD where advances are happening constantly.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If the school did it's job properly, the job hunter can list a dozen different word processors with which he is competent, INCLUDING MSOffice and OpenOffice, GoogleSpreadsheet, Abi, Gnu, WordPerfect (is that still around?) and more. In short, he should be familiar with AT LEAST the 10 most popular business applications, proprietary or not.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You must be joking. I wouldn't use G-apps including mail for my professional needs ... there are security problems involved and I need serious support for my work. I am also working with databases, I want to encrypt my mail. I can't get these on Google for free.
OpenOffice does everything I need for my work.
Can you tell me please, what do you personally miss in OpenOffice, so you have to use M$ Office ?
You have to know how to do it. Germans did it right, so they succeeded.
It isn't impossible to migrate. It costs money, but on the long run you win. The potential cost reduction is huge on the long run.
And the most important reason to migrate is very well described in this document:
http://osor.eu/case_studies/declaration-of-independence-the-limux-project-in-munich
The reason is : "the main motive is the desire for strategic independence from software suppliers."
You don't know what you're currently paying in site licenses, and yet you're "in a position to transition to open source?" Either your university is completely mis-managed, or you have your head in the clouds.
The first step to coming up with a cost saving plan is to figure out how much you're currently paying. If you don't know that, then you're not in a position to transition your university to crap. Sorry to break the news, buddy.
Comment of the year
I have OO.o installed in both my work and home computers. But I use it infrequently. The slow start up doesn't help. The inability to open a file in calc, and not have it go to writer simply because it has a non-excel or non-calc 3 letter extension is stupid. If I'm opening a file in calc, at least be smart enough to open up a dialog box and ask me if I want to import a comma delimited file.
Some lesser criticisms - not able to read complicated MS Office files (embedded stuff, etc). I recognize this as a reason to move to an open format, but I have to live in the real world, unfortunately. And not opening powerpoint files properly is a big thing too.
Okay. I've read through about half of the comments here and I'm really curious.
Does open source meet this guideline?
- It must lower the bar of usability - anyone irrespective of IT skill should be able to create applications effortlessly w/out prior training
- It must enable application development w/out writing code or scripting
- It must be Web-based
- It must be secure, session-based
- It must have access controls and audit trails
- It must reduce the cost of ownership to zero, eliminate recurring fees
- It must be scalable to meet the needs of organizations of all sizes
- It must be sustainable (operating into the forseeable future w/out crapping out on you)
- It must be dynamic - capable of integrating and interoperable with the latest/hardware/software technologies
- It must allow businesses to enjoy highly customized software at negligible costs (you're building it yourself!)
- It must be a technology that businesses can bring in-house - not Software as a Service aka "pay to play" (oh, Blaggo).
So.. who's got somethin in the pipeline that can do *all* of this? From my research so far, the old guard market players like MS/ORCL/IBM can't. New guys on the block w/ "alternative" solutions can't. (Please, don't insult me with "Salesforce" or SaaS ideas. I could spend a day talking about how SaaSing your bread&butter apps is such a sham)
Okay. So I work at a company (and there goes half the attention span) that developed this technology that was built on the guideline above and a lot more but I don't want slashdot to cut me for spamm or for writing too much.
Clean & dry guys it's a web-based app platform built on open source. Everyone wants to save a bucket load of money. Does this tech have legs or not?
It's pretty obvious there are a ton of IT guys commenting on this post. What do you guys think? Would you guys gimme some feedback if by some ridiculous chance you decided decided to read the last comment for a story posted on February 8th?
I'd really love to hear from you guys.
my company address is www.ajaxo.com. If you really still feel like e-mailing me your comments/feedback you can write to my personal address at kkfung85@hotmail.com with "Feedback" in the subject line (my company doesn't know I'm writing this. It's just that I'm really pissed off that people like 'exmoron' who made this post want to save money and I'm supposedly sitting on this tech that can, but I don't know how to talk to other people about it.)
-Frustrated
I can't answer for the OP, but I don't recall there being email or calendar applications in OpenOffice last time I tried it. And the recommended alternates - Thunderbird & Lightening - don't exactly compare favourably to Exchange + Outlook.
I agree with you on Google Apps though. I use Google's Apps for Domain, primarly for my personal email, however if I was to even consider such a solution for business purposes, one of the pre-requisites would be that the service must be hosted inside the corporate network.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Why does an organization or enterprise need to be all one OS or another? Do you really want to be responsible for the fate of an entire university's computing infrastructure?
The "transition" to open source at your institution is already happening. Get in touch with faculty and grad students using open source tools. Encourage them to request open source software and services from the University. Work with anyone and everyone you can to make sure that the websites and application they are responsible for work with Firefox and WebKit.
Use open source tools in your office, and document how you made it work with the University's services. Work with the IT folks when you can (cooperation is your friend!) but when you can't, or they are dragging their feet, quietly find some other way to do it.
Unless you have a mandate from administration and funding for your own shop, you can't actually force any kind of transition. Bide your time, keep in touch with other users, and use your expertise to help out where you can.
If you want to propose something to the administration, providing professional and secure PHP and Ruby-on-Rails services to students and faculty will do more for open source adoption than just about anything else I can think of.
Speaking as someone who learnt to install Solaris 2.4 and Linux before learning to install DOS or Windows, and someone who grew up on AppleWorks (Apple II version), Wordstar and WordPerfect (VMS version), I had no problem using MS Word. What did you see as the necessary "magic" that exposure to MS Word gives you so that they know what to expect?
because your going to need it with all the head injuries you will receive from banging your head against a brick wall known as user
reluctance to change.
First, I see you've simply dodged all of the most important points I raised in my post. On the minor technical quibble of what format to submit resumes in, everyone can read a PDF these days. Having served on two hiring committees so far, and being an IT worker, I can safely say that your resume is much easier to handle when it's a PDF containing whatever is needed to properly render the document. OpenOffice.org can generate that PDF natively, including loading your Microsoft Word resume.
Digital Citizen
Because I don't assume that the needs of the users are met. I do graphics work. I've used both the open and closed ecosystems' products. The open ecosystem's products, to be pretty frank, suck.
Have you tried CinePaint? If so what was wrong with it? Then same with Inkscape and Blender? Currently I use OS X Leopard and don't have the resources to buy Photoshop CS for graphics/photography. I tried CinePaint but it only works in X Windows and I wasn't able to get it working so I'm planning to install Ubuntu, then I'll be able to use CinePaint. And the others easier.
If I can't do what I want with them I might buy an older upgradeable version of CS off of eBay. But I want to try open source apps first.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
ways:
1. The userbase doesn't turn over every 4 years, so you can invest more in training.
Students are more likely to be used to or open to using something else.
2. You pay the users, not vice versa, so you can tell them what to do.
Perhaps I should have tried that on my professors.
4. Govt employees want solutions, undergrads want mail and porn.
I get all, solutions, mail, and porn, with open source.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This not a fight worth fighting unless you have complete control over the decision and implementation. Move on....
C'mon, you like Microsoft and you know it. All software is free. And, yes, I DO mean free as in freedom!
I've been listening to the OS thing for several years, and the idea of switching a university, unless it is really poor, to OS to save money just doesn't make sense - as one poster pointed out, you'll pry excel out of finance profs dead hands.
People will be glad to switch when OSS is truly better: I work at a small biotechnology company, with lots of computer savy scientists and enginers, and when I installed firefox 3 years ago *kazing* people did not have to be pursuaded - when software is good, people use it; that people don't use open office or the gimp or other oss is because it is not better then MS
Note that I did not, repeat NOT say that thegimp or open office are not good: they are not better, and people will not switch untill OSS is better.
Of course, a lot of oss does not seem to be better: for fancy things, thegimp and open office are not as good as photoshop or office (asbestos emacs vs vi gloves on...)
So...
High schools have less money then universities, and the argument that they need direct training in Office as the workplace standard is less effective.
I think one could also make a good argument that having serious parts of the software - the school web stie, school email, etc under the control of the students would work: kids respond to responsibility.
High schools also need a lot of 3D cad type software, layout software for the student newspaper, etc etc - for my school district, and i live in a very affluent suburb of boston, the cost of InDesign for the middle school newspaper was a big deal.
But state gov seems like the real winner for OS: I live in Massachusetts, and we lost, big big time, when the minicomputer companies (DEC, WANG, Prime) went under, and people get the idea of not sending money to redmond, and keeping that money in state, and using the tax dollars to help start a linux industry
after all, isn't stimulus the word of hte day ?
but the important point is that Windows/MS will rapidly join the dustbin of history the day oss does something that windows can"t: after all, the reason we have pcs is not due to IBM or steve jobs, it is due to two professors who made visicalc, open source software that gave people a reason to buy a pc
Not to mention fighting the last war - if it is all in the cloud, who cares ?
There is the costs of training and implementation... and finding well qualified employees to run your systems will not be easy on a education budget.
There's a cost to upgrading to a new version of proprietary software as well... and student may find it difficult to afford a proprietary program.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Speaking from a user point of view, I can assure you that any attempt to change the attitudes of either professors or administrative staff towards open-source software is a tough job. Administrators may reason that too many of their processes are tied to particular software bundles not available in the FOSS-world or that turnaround costs for introducing FOSS are too high. Professors are a wholly different bunch: They regard their office computer as a natural extension of their working environment. Any disruption in this environment is highly unwelcome. I can guarantee that you would not like to go into fights with either of both sides. There is, however, a highly unobtrusive way of introducing open source software to the university: public internet access and the like. If you really want to change user-experience, this is the place to go. The argument for superiors: Conversion to FOSS substantially diminishes TCO. Public access points can be administered centrally, and the risk of demolition by students decreases significantly. Moreover, throwing a microsoft license at a workplace with limited capabilities is a waste of money. The argument for you from a FOSS point of view: You can prove that FOSS significantly reduces TCO in a given area. Moreover, users feel at home very quickly (if the setup is reasonable, as I would hope). And you as an administrator gain valuable experience in a limited area, enhancing your credibility. Further steps in any migration strategy very much depend on the infrastructure of the institution as a whole, so any general advice should be regarded with some caution - even if it comes from slashdot.
If you're not already in a position to know what the site license expenses are for all of the software you've listed, then you're not in a position where you are going to be able to influence the purchasing policies of the University for that software. Give it up now and save yourself a lot a grief career-wise.
BTW: I'm a big Unix [and to some degree Linux supporter AND user] but I have no problem at all with monopolists or capitalists. I aspire to be the former, and am already the latter. :-)
I do have issues with Microsoft though. unreliable software, opaque [eg. no easy access to documentation], and too much cost for the value delivered.
It's awesome that you use FOSS software at home and save money doing so. Unless you're planning on employing all of your university's students upon graduation you need to consider what they should be familiar with to be competitive in the job market.
By all means provide FOSS alternatives, but keep in mind that you are truly disservicing every single design student that you don't expose to OS X, as well as every business major you don't expose to MS Office, and every comp sci major that isn't exposed to OS X, windows, and Linux.
If your university cares at all about its students it'll be a lot easier to convince them to adopt some FOSS alternatives than it will be to get them to drop their current licensed software. Thus I think the money angle is a bad one.
- if they go with OOo, the licensing is cheaper (free). They also will be offering a solution that absolutely everyone can use : teacher, staff, university computer labs, students at home, on their laptops... all this regardless of the system : Windows, Mac OS
The problem with this is that OpenOffice does not have a native Mac port. To install and use OpenOffice X Windows has to be installed. Now there is a native version office suite for Macs based on OO, NeoOffice, which I use myself.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Student will probably get pirated copies anyway, so there's no point in trying to give them free licenses.
This isn't as easy as it used to be. Now even MS Office requires Activation, Office has since Office 2000.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Troll? He makes a reasonable point. Why is the question "How Do I Start a University Transition To Open Source?"
Surely the question is "What infrastructure standards will help me meet the university's goals, and reduce my budget?".
I'm just amazed that the OP is in a position to make decisions when hes effectively made the decision to transfer to FOSS, and he has absolutely no idea what the license costs for his existing software is! To be completely frank, this guy needs supervision from somebody with business skill, not a FOSS migration plan.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Why would you push going to OSS for the sake of going to OSS? Why not instead push to change the University policy to "Let's use the best software out there period." If you take this approach, you can quickly get FireFox in the door on pretty much every machine, regardless of OS. If you keep it up, you could bring in various OSS applications, provided they are the best solution. Perhaps you convert to an Apache web server from your Windows IIS web servers, but you keep Exchange for e-mail given your University's needs. Maybe on the other hand you keep your IIS web servers because you have a lot of ASP.NET 3.5 apps on it, but you switch to sendmail to save licensing costs and nobody uses the Exchange scheduling features. Point is if you build your reputation as they guy who suggests the best solution rather then that guy who walks around cursing everything Microsoft regardless of what it is or does, then you will add value to your University. If you on the other hand push OSS just because; well, then you will lose credibility and actually hurt the good OSS projects. For example, I love Firefox, Tomcat, Apache, RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, etc. But I hate OpenOffice.org because it is crappy compared to MS Office and ubuntu, because it doesn't give back to kernel.org like Red Hat or Novell do. I like sendmail when money is an issue, but if scheduling is important, I suggest Exchange. Don't get your panties in a bunch blindly supporting products because you are brainwashed, that is what Apple whores do (Note this post sent from Apple). If you recommend the best programs, then you, the University and those programs will be better off in the long run.
Respect the Constitution
Remember OSS is not free, and most likely your company will hirer programmers to customize the software to meet there needs
OOo sucks compared to MS Office. But for you let me also say OOo sucks compared to Google Docs. OOo also sucks compared to WordPerfect if it is still around, or even if it isn't around anymore come to think of it.
Respect the Constitution
Glad you see it this way. I presume my children will be skillful enough to translate any tuition in MS Word into the office suite of their choice.
However when I need a dumbass receptionist, and my budget extends to a dumb bimbo who can only use what she has been taught, then guess which one I'm going to pick? The dumb bimbo with Word experience - because thats what our office, and our clients use.
95% or whatever the figure is of employers are going to be in the same boat. You start teaching all your students OO.org, and sure - the skilled ones will be able to find employment - but the unskilled ones can't.
This is not a question of "correct" idealogy. You will not keep you university running when the graduate employment rate and employer satisfaction is reduced, for _whatever_ reason.
A universitys job is to not compromise the future of its students to push an ideology. Christ, the number of people that seem to be all out to expose their students/employers to extra risk for the sole reason of "M$ is teh EVILS" is both incredible and laughable.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Start installing OSS apps alongside their closed-source counterparts.
At least for awhile, give the users access to both, and advertise that the option is out there.
For student computers, try making an install CD or DVD with several OSS apps, maybe the same mix of programs you deploy on the university's computers.
Existing Windows ports of OSS apps seem to be a great way to ease people into the system of OSS.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Don't blame Microsoft for Son #1's lack of curiosity. That's your dumb fault, not Bill Gates'. Curiosity is how you learn and you were probably too strict with him as a kid, burned it out of him before he even got off the ground.
The entire argument that having the source code makes for better learning is ridiculous. Having the source code is just cheating. If you are using a closed source Windows application, and you want that behavior in your own application, you have to sit down and go through the uses cases, then figure out how to make it yourself. That exertion gives you deep knowledge and experience in how to do something. What does the open source world offer? Why, just cut and paste and gussy up some code to make it look like yours. That's not learning. That's just copying.
If you really wanted to learn how hardware worked on a machine, then, Linux is arguably even worse because the whole point is to write portable code. The best operating system to learn about hardware is arguably an old MS-DOS. There, you have launch right into real mode, one program at a time, you make assembly calls in the DOS executive to do the stupidest possible things and then after that you don't bother with it, because you wind up just writing memory out yourself. If you want kids to really learn hardware, then, don't even bother with the operating system! Given them Turbo C, DOS, and let them go mashing up pointers in frame buffers and flipping to protect mode, setting up rings, and all of that stuff. That's hardware.
If you want to know how computers really work, then operating systems are for sissies.
This is my sig.
If communications stay on Office formats for whatever reason, at least use the 2003 file formats...not sure how good OO.org 3 is with the OOXML file formats
PDFs are all well and good, but maybe you shouldn't use 'em when a simple word processor document or text-on-the-webpage would suffice
Have no idea how you'd get through the thick collective skull of faculty, but you could at least do these kinds of things form the level of the university administration.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
If you want/need to keep Windows and/or Mac, would it be feasible to turn the university's computers into dual-boot machines?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
MHO, but if you don't even know how to determine licensing costs, I doubt you will have any real influence in the decision making process.
Also, considering that the majority of us corps are driven off of MS software in the general business offices, you would be doing your students a disservice by limiting their exposure and functionality with that suite.
If your University gives Informatics or Computing courses, there is not discussion. A true computing-informatic man knows the Unix blak magic, and for students there is not a better choice than Linux. And for making their lifes easier, all university platform must be on Linux.
I just want to be sure to tell people to avoid it since there is a raving lunatic working there who has put his own techno-politics before the best interest of the students.
You bring up a good point. But, really, isn't it better to teach the students what a general markup should look like (say, using TeX), and then helping them map that to MS Office and other "office" products?
I hear that DVORAK is a superior keyboard layout to QWERTY. I think it would be beneficial for universities to only provide DVORAK keyboards.
After all, a university is about providing a well-rounded education. Indoctrination in the world of QWERTY may be useful in getting a white-collar job, but is not in any way vital to a proper education.
Oh, but wait, if we take off our idealogical hats, and realise that both FOSS and MS software cost the uni close to zero dollars, then why aren't we picking the defacto standard? Or is it somehow the uni's job to drive changed based on some people's viewpoint?
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
A universitys job is to not compromise the future of its students to push an ideology
That's, pushing an ideology, exactly what you are doing by requiring MS Office.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It even runs on Windows and Mac OS X if they won't let you run it on Linux. It imports Blackboard courses. The lowest Blackboard product for our 1,200 student school was $15,000 per year. For the cost of a server and the same amount of time it takes to upgrade Blackboard you are there. Step by step documentation was so slick I set it up on Ubuntu Linux with little prior Linux server admin experience. I did have prior Mac OS X Server experience.
Educating students using the tools their future employers are going to ask them to use when they graduate is not pushing an ideology.
The university also teaches QWERTY... its a defacto standard. You want to change defacto standards? Feel free. Just don't mess with the future of a bunch of kids to try and force change in the workplace.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
I worked at a university that had a policy of open source and open standards for IT.
That policy has been completely revoked in favor of 100% Microsoft.
I don't work there any more.
It's hard to break into a switch.. you'll need to: Get people using Open Office. Start with students, especially those using non MSOffice to complete their papers. Sell the export to pdf feature. Show Firefox, inkscape, and gimp.. along with Open Office these programs all load on standard Windows. Then look at LTSP.org. There are some case studies in there that show cost savings. The biggest after licenses is the need for IT support - it goes way down. www.distrowatch.com
Hell no; I work at a university! I want them to keep making money however it takes!
No sig for you!!
Educating students using the tools their future employers are going to ask them to use when they graduate is not pushing an ideology.
Not all employers want employees with MS Office experience. Maybe for their office drones but not everybody.
Actually Friday my brother-in-law who's a Certified Financial Planner, CFP, and runs his own business called and asked me about those netbooks. He said he saw one in Target with Linux and wanted to know what I thought about them, if they were any good. I guess seeing as how the economy is bad he liked that the netbook was only $300 or whatever. I said I didn't know what Target had or anything so he asked me to look at it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The students are paying a lot of money for their education, so they are expecting to have the tools available that they're comfortable using.
If you want to encourage the use of open source software you could have the students install goto portableapps.com and download some OSS portable applications on personal flash drives to try out.
In Open Office, you can change the configuration to save word processing documents in .doc format and spreadsheets in .xls. Mail can be done in Thunderbird, Web browsing in Firefox, Accounting in GNUCash, etc...
And, anyone who says that OpenOffice is any different from MS Office obviously hasn't used Open Office much. It doesn't have ribbon menus or any of the other bloat that MS Office 2007 does but it is almost identical to MS Office 2003 in almost every way. I switched over completely 18 months ago to see if I would need to go back for said specific feature and so far I haven't. I have used it for business, to write papers for school, to do accounting assignments, etc... If file formats are an issue, just configure it to save to the Office 2003 formats (Note: No one in businesses use .docx from Office 2007).
If you're primary concern in choosing Open Source Software for your school is to save money... You're doing it wrong. School is about the students, not how much the instructors make or the bottom line. I wish you people would understand that.
Even MS Word doesn't have reliable file portability with that level of difficulty, and early on I learned that "Reads other programs' formats" is about as misleading a statement as you can make without actually lying.
Answer: for each program you want to replace, find some heavy users who are basically favourable to FOSS, and work with them until you *know* there aren't any problems left. Else, actually, forget it, and concentrate on the places where you know FOSS is good (servers, perhaps).
And the best of luck.
Beware the law of unintended consequences! When I interview 1st year graduates for tech support or combined tech support and programming positions, applicants skilled in MS Office are almost always hired over those skilled in Open Office and others. The reason is simple. Even in an office with less than 200 employees, our help desk receives more than 5,000 support calls a year related either to Windows or MS Office. Staffing with people who can resolve those problems result in very high user scores in satisfaction surveys. With regard to those staffing the business positions, experienced people with industry-specific knowledge all seem to come with MS experience and no desired to embrace open source. I've been able to gain a limited degree of acceptance for Firefox instead of IE, but getting users to give up MS Office risks complete user revolt. As my coders are receptive to using open server-side tools, that is where open opportunities have the best chance. If your university fails to consider these items, your graduates will be selected for far fewer jobs than those from other schools. Just wait until their lack of appreciation makes it back to those who failed to prepare them for the real-world saturated with MS Office users willing to slam those who try to help them with different tools. Good luck in your quest.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Start with Blackboard... you want that out no matter what. Go for Moodle. The rest are just minor apps you can rack them off whenever. Next is IE that has to go. Next Outlook >Thunderbird Move workstations to Linux and put any Windows apps on an application server. If they have to use them they still can. There isn't a lot of point in replacing Windows with Macs so give all the Macs to a charity. Too bad if they don't like Open Office they will get used to it and very likely 95% of everyone don't use the features in MS Office anyway. If you need something else just get the computer department to set that as an assignment, make the students do it. Likely there are SQL server that will need to be replaced with mySQL. When the Blackboard rep comes in offering to buy lunch put a few eees in his wine then introduce him to the vice chancellor. Any MS rep you can usually offer a joint, listen to how stressed he is and get an incriminating photograph. If the Adobe rep arrives just say you have not budget, they won't be offering any freebies. Job done!
Make changes where it *makes sense*. Microsoft Office currently is best of breed
I agree it's better to make changes when it makes sense, but MS Office is best of breed? More like it's the dominate office suite.
Windows on the desktop obviously goes side by side with this.
There's nothing I could do on my Windows PC I can't do on my Mac, except for suffer through crashes.
I have seen far too often that 'techies' get involved and just because the technology is more superior (in some way) they totally discount the business benefit from having it set up that way.
I agree, the first step when contemplating something new is to evaluate what's being used and what's needed then choosing something that fills those needs.
What is your roadmap for the future of IT? What paths are you looking to cross? Say the CIO wants to invest some money into Sharepoint, or wants to use WIM (standard image format) for deployments, or wants to lock down users better (AD Policies). These things are *windows specific*.
Here's the problem, these are as you say "windows specific". That's locking in one vender instead of analyzing the needs. As an example I'll use Vista. I want to be able to play media files, maybe serve them. So do I get Vista Home or Vista Ultimate? Because a requirement is a server, Ultimate is the better choice. However if what's needed or wanted is an office suite, light photo correcting such as red eye removal, and the occasional games Home would be better. What you're saying, it seems to me, that you would require Ultimate for this.
Usually the cost of changing everything, retraining users, and getting them to be AS PRODUCTIVE as they were before is far more expensive than to keep technology the same and use branches into other things to accomplish business tasks.
Retraining is needed for upgrades, even MS upgrades, as well so that's a wash.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
What you said, aren't actually so serious drawback issues. They seem more cosmetic to me. You can accomplish all your professional tasks, if I understand it right. You just want it to be fancy. But you have to pay for fancy, a lot of money actually. And this money is drawn away from students in university ...
What is you choice ... fancy gui or more money for the research ? My choice is clear and your should probably also be as clear, if you would be paying it from your pocket.
And OO is getting better and better. I can say, I had some problems using in those 1.x version days. But now, I can't really complain of anything, that would hinder my productivity. Interesting, there are more and more stuff in OO, that don't exist in M$O.
"And the recommended alternates - Thunderbird & Lightening - don't exactly compare favourably to Exchange + Outlook."
I use Evolution on Fedora 10 and I love it. I am using my email with an IMAP connection, works like breeze and I love it. There are really good guys taking care of the server with my email account on it, I am using it for 15 years now ;)
And no downtime or problems for me in that period !!! And I am using email for professional needs. Off course, they didn't pay a penny for that server and it serves in a fantastic way for so long.
And if something wrong would happen (but it didn't in 15 years I am using it), then I would just call those guys and ask them to go through the logs ...
For the Exchange functionality .... you have plugins for Lotus Notes and Exchange on Evolution ... but there is no real need for that. There are also open source solutions for Exchange out there ... and getting better and better with time ...
I am an assistant professor. If you came to my office and told me to use anything, I'd kick your IT-fiddle-monkey-ass to the door.
Here's something I really want university IT guys to get through their thick skulls:
You work for us. Not the other way around.
If I want to use a Windows machine, you need to figure out how to let me. If I want to use a Mac (which I do), you need to make sure I can get to my servers. If I want to use Linux (which I hope to be doing one day--when the software I need to do my research is available on the platform), I expect your support there, too.
In the specific case of what you're proposing--moving to OSS for all everyday tasks, I have to be totally clear and honest here: You are wholly unqualified to make that call. It's not your job; it's not your responsibility; it's none of your damned business. You don't even know what I do; how could you know what I need?
Finally, let me say this: My first jobs in academia were in IT support, and I, too, got drunk on the power. I, too, was young and full of myself, and I, too, ran around telling people what they should do, instead of listening to what it is that they needed to do, and helping them do it. Now that I'm on the other side (and older and less full of myself), I see why I pissed people off so much in those days. I sucked at my job.
If you try to meddle in your customers' business, you suck at your job, too.
Rewrite the syllabus as most of these are MS centric !
MSDNAA, anyone?
Sorry, but MSDNAA doesn't cover MS-Office for the students.
Only for the staff and for the university computers.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This isn't as easy as it used to be. Now even MS Office requires Activation
How are the protections present on an actual official installation CD-ROM any relevant to what happens with cracked version downloaded of the internet ?!?
Office has since Office 2000.
And students haven't been copying floppies for the last 10 years neither.
As with any copy restriction mechanism, activation is utterly useless:
It only restricts and pisses off legitimate users who have to put up with copy protection on their legally obtained copies.
The pirates never get to see it, they just download the cracked torrent off pirate bay.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Maybe you call hand-writing labels for a mailout going to a few hundred clients "being enterprising," but I call it stupid busywork that a machine running MS Word can handle for me. Now go fuck yourself. People like you are the reason OpenOrifice has always sucked and still sucks. Go play WoW in your mother's basement, you fat, sexless troll.
Money may not be the only argument, but it certainly speaks.
But I think you're starting at the wrong place. Why not get the costs of the licences from the uni itself? Serves two very good purposes: 1. you get real answers, other than just what outsiders think. It will help work out if there is even a financial incentive in the first place. 2. It will test the buy-in that you will get from the institution. If finance or IT isn't willing to share that info, you'll need to do more than just present a financial benefit.
> I'd like to make an argument that going open source would save the university money
Wrong argument. This is a college. If you want open source (or for that matter anything different from what the school has been doing) to fly, you need to coherently argue that it will improve the students' learning opportunities.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I've been an adjunct at a local College here for several years, and done some IT consulting for them. They're entirely WebCT based. Blackboard has been twisting their arms about it, but the faculty in general has zero desire to switch.
I haven't used Blackboard myself, but all I can say is you would have to try HARD to have a worse GUI than WebCT does. It does WORK, usually pretty reliably, but whoever designed it obviously was sans-clue in the user interface department. Has to be the worst webapp I personally have ever used. I guess that makes Bb truly a scary prospect! lol.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
But yeah, Bb owns WebCT. The thing is, at least at the place I have taught online courses for several years, ALL of the faculty knows how to use WebCT and EVERY course has masses of material in it. Lots of the faculty members also have things like Excel spreadsheets and whatnot that rely on data exports from WebCT, it is all integrated into the rest of the school's provisioning and other IT systems. So really there is about zippo grande chance they'll ever migrate from WebCT, as long as it continues to exist and be supported.
So, I doubt Bb is going to get rid of WebCT anytime soon, since at that point there would be NO reason to switch to Bb.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
If you aren't in a position where you can ask what your school's Microsoft licensing costs are, then you aren't in a position to influence the school to move to FOSS.
If you're a university, you're really going to need to offer both solutions. Why? Because your job, as a university is to educate students to what they'll be preparing themselves for in the workforce... and at this point, that's not Linux and that's not Open Office. Sad, but true. Not recognizing Microsoft is doing those students a disservice because most likely, they'll be using MS products when they get into the workforce. What I would do if I was you would be to dual install some open source tools and then let people use what they want, and see if that softens the impact of a drastic change (people hate change, and drastic change will create knee jerk reactions). So far, the Linux community doesn't seem to understand that. There isn't one "splash" that will get all users to change, it will and has to be a gradual process for success.
There have to be at least a few faculty members who "get it". Start with them. Faculty are tireless salesmen of their own personal agenda. You need the energy and the "viral marketing" that faculty can provide.
Then proceed to those whose departments want more software than their budget can pay for. The TCO algorithm gets turned on its head when you consider the concrete cost of license purchase vs. the "soft" cost of transition and training. Often you can squeeze "free" labor from areas like student helpers, etc. whereas software licenses have to be purchased with real purchase orders and budget dollars. Microsoft only sends the gift fairy when they sense the entire university is going FOSS. Keep the transition small and they will never effectively counter the erosion of commercial software -- one prof at a time.
This is insidious in that for less than $50 per Full Time Employee (FTE), the campus can install the OS, Office, and a large number of applications ON EVERY MACHINE. However, whenever this runs out, they have no software that they can use, so unless they have completely transitioned to non-MS software during the last year of the agreement, they have to renew.
The other side of the problem is that there are applications that will require them to use Windows and even MS Office. Some of this are back-ground programs you will never know about ,such as document imaging and retrieval in the administrative departments, or systems such as the student use systems like Blackboard. While there may be alternatives for some systems, there may not be some for other, critical, applications. Also, switching can not be done incrementally, but has to be done all at once. This causes concerns with data migration, upkeep, and end-user training.
However, all hope is not lost. First, since lab computers don't have to pay for licenses, it can be argued that they are freebies, and not using them is not wasting money. You can then start trying out alternatives there. This can also be done in smaller departments which will not see as much money lost by not using licenses off the Campus Agreement.
Also, Campus Agreements can be negotiated by department. Therefore, you can see if some departments can be exempted completely from having to participate. You can then show them how much they would save by going with the FOSS options, as compared to being forced into the MS CA.
Finally, look for departments with lots of Macs. While they are often hooked on MS Office for the Mac, they are usually more open to alternatives. Showing them NeoOffice or OO.org on OS X can be a first step for them.
As in all things, here is what you need to remember:
Remember, you want to help them, you want to help students, and they want to help students. Therefore (paraphrasing Jerry Maguire) you are trying to help them help students.
Good luck to you.
Cause you can't get a tan from an amber monitor. If you do, there is something horribly wrong.
For removing the name of the company that makes overpriced underhardwared junk from the tagline of this story where it did not belong.
Right from the start you should be able to install all the cross platform apps you are thinking about on all university PCs. This allows people to use them and give feedback. You will most likely need to create faqs on how to save in cross compatible formats. Let the students decide if they can use the non-windows apps. Definitely find out if teachers are teaching with an app, since if they are you will probably lose no matter what. Since they won't want to alter there course to teach open source(plus what would be the point since schools should be teaching what is used in industry, not what saves money). Teaching OO over Word isn't going to help the student much when they get jobs.
Beware. One of the dangers of advocating open source is overestimating the abilities, and the patience, of the target audience. They will attempt to use the OSS, but failing to achieve proficiency with it in what they perceive to be a reasonable period of time, i.e. about three minutes, they will tell everyone they know that you talked them into using this "stupid" software. This software is so "dumb", that it doesn't even know that it should work exactly the way the software that they're accustomed to works. And then they will tell everyone how stupid you are.
After all, it would be down right un-American to not work my ass off to help cloth and feed a bunch of rich assholes!
So, while we are at it then, do you want to do something about universities owning huge patent portfolios paid for by your tax dollars, while at the same time raising tuition faster than even the price of gasoline?
Yes. Lets cut Pell Grants.
The student is will to pay $x to go to school. Pell grants allow the school to charge $(x+PellGrant). No extra cost to the student, but they get extra money to throw at things like football stadiums and multi-million dollar severance packages for getting rid of coaches early.
BTW, I am a recipient of Pell Grants.
Just clamp down on illegal use of software while making Linux, open office etc. available. The students themselves will do the install for you.
I find it appalling my university licenses spell check software. After all it is simply a list of words. Why can't all the universities around the country form a consortium and design things like free spell checkers for a good place to start.
what you see is not what prints. There's no way to print in landscape mode short of rotating your entire image, manually, 90 degrees to one side.
Switching to landscape mode in Page Setup in every other application is sufficient to produce landscape-orientation printouts, but it has never worked in any version of Inkscape.
Ump, I wonder why. Thanks.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
1. Build a demostration network utilizing spare and retired old 1ghz era out-of warranty hardware that you're about to sell off to the comp sci students for their study(/bittorrent) boxes. Show them a whizzy Gnome/KDE desktop, show how everything just works on the network and is easily administered with a gui, scripts, and documentation for the MCSE's to follow, demostrate some network security. Show no command lines.
2. There is no step two.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
If you believe something is better then install it on your machine (if you have admin rights), wether that be linux or notepad++.
Isn't that how it started with p.c.'s and spreadsheets?
I'm actually in this situation myself. The short version is this: After years of frustration with IT decision-making at my university (Blackboard, a recent move to Exchange, a possible forthcoming move to a proprietary CMS), I finally started to go up the chain of command with a basic question: "what role does open source and open standards play in our strategy?" I finally reached the Provost (effectively the COO of the institution), and was invited to an IT strategy discussion on this question next month. What I'd really like is to have set of itemized bullet points that describe the value proposition for both open source and open standards in ways that might resonate with administrators in such a way as to change the way decision-making happens (e.g. to include as specific priorities x, y, and z). I need something clear, specific, succinct, and non-ideological. Any suggestions?
Burn down the data center. When they realize the amount of cash they've gotta drop, they'll be begging for ways to save cash.
Students are more likely to be used to or open to using something else.
Cant agree. Students like getting non-free stuff for free or cheap.
So most (non-CS students) would rather bittorrent Vista and Office 2007 than they would use Linux.
In most schools, what you're paying for tuition is only a small fraction of what it costs to have you as a student. The rest comes from state allocations, donations, indirect cost funding from grants, etc.
You do realize that what you describe is in no way how it works in the real world, right?
At least for state/public schools, the tuition cost has nothing to do with financing or grants available.
The way tuition & fees are set isnt always sane, but its nothing like you are suggesting.
I'm not making excuses for Linux. Fact is is marketing, which Linus distros do little of, has a big impact of what people buy. If advertizing, part of marketing, didn't have an impact then businesses would not spend a lot on it. And yes, businesses do spend a lot on marketing. pharmaceutical companies [pdf warning] spend more on marketing than on research.
Ubuntu is not as a good as a desktop operating system as Windows Vista. It's just not.
Ubuntu may not be good to you but it is to plenty of other users. And there are plenty who do not like Vista, if people liked it then OEMs would not offer a downgrade path from Vista to XP. It also offers competition, and without competition things hardly improve.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
See, I can't stand XP compared to Linux but I like Vista better than anything else. XP always looked kinda bad to me, like a little too cute, and I liked it only really because it was a Windows NT kernel that was good for games.
Windows NT, 4.0, is the only version of Windows I liked. It also gave me the least amount of trouble, maybe that's why I preferred it.
I have both Vista and Ubuntu running on the same machine, each with its own drive, and I think Vista just blows Ubuntu out of the water.
What don't you like about Ubuntu? After getting sick and tired of Windows crashing on me, and MS wanting to treat users like criminals, I switched from Windows to OS X. When it came tyme to get a new computer I bought a Mac, when I had been using Windows for 10 years. I'm been seriously considering installing Ubuntu on my Mac to make it dualboot.
I program, and I've always been leaning towards Linux because its more C++ friendly
That's partially why I'd like to install Ubuntu on my Mac, development and programming. While there's X Code for Macs it's strictly for Macs and right now I'm using Eclipse for Java. I also want to work with Perl and maybe PHP, Apache, and Ruby. I thought about setting up LAMP but I'm not sure about MySQL, I've been thinking of trying Firebird instead.
there are so many zealots in the Linux camp
The same can be said of the Microsoft camp, as well as the Apple camp.
It's as futile as George Bush trying to make liberals happy, or Barrack Obama trying to make conservatives happy. You just can't.
I'm not sure I want Obama to prevail, and I voted for him. I don't like the idea of giving large businesses more taxpayer money. What needs to be done is to get government out of the way.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Students are more likely to be used to or open to using something else.
Cant agree. Students like getting non-free stuff for free or cheap.
I can't agree, since they aren't locked in yet students are more likely to try something else. Here's a thread on /. about how Teachers Are Obstacles To Linux In Education. That was from December 2008. But more recently there was one about how a student was punished, kicked out of school I think, for using Linux. Here's an article about how students were asking a teacher about Linux.
In most schools, what you're paying for tuition is only a small fraction of what it costs to have you as a student. The rest comes from state allocations, donations, indirect cost funding from grants, etc.
That's why college is getting more expensive, states don't want to give more money to colleges. That has been going on for years, about 20 years ago in Florida the state lottery was billed as a way to increase educational funding.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?