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)?"
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
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.
Just thought I'd throw in there, the reason there's hardly any information available is mostly because the sweetheart deals come hand in hand with non-disclosure agreements. Microsoft is evil, not stupid...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth