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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
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
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.
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.
If one of his major goals is to save money (and not be an OS zealot for example, changing to OS just because etc) then doing something that causes MS to open the charity chest be an alternate, possibly acceptable alternative?
Call up MS's volume / edu license group and ask for quotes, saying you're comparing TCO with MS and looking at switching. Not only will you get your quotes, but the Free Gifts Fairy at MS will call you and offer all sorts of nice things to drop the idea of FOSS. Even if you're not seriously considering FOSS, that's a nice way to say, cut the bill for next year's software upgrades in half or better isn't it?
I mean, if MS is going to try to bribe you, may as well take advantage of it if you can, as a serious option.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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?
well this is true and not true. Money saved is most definitely not the only talking point. Talk about security. Talk about cross platform functionality and open standards (after all alot of students use Mac and some use Linux too). They want a system that is secure, costs less but also works with all computers being brought into the network. Open source supports open standards, is more often cross platform and easier to secure. Not to mention it is often free.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
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.
I suspect that'd be about as effective as convincing a Pepsi campus that selling Coke would be a valuable "learning" experience for the undergrads. Personally I'd start by selling copies of Open Office, GIMP, Ubuntu, etc. (for $1 or however much it cost to put them on a CD) at the bookstore alongside Office, Photoshop, and Windows and then when it comes time to update all your office software again, use whatever sales figures (in terms of copies sold, obviously) were generated from that against how many support calls went to the school helpdesk to determine if you can even make a case to the school or not.
I've seen this happen as well too.
I seriously doubt the OP will be able to justify the move the OSS. Your Microsoft rep will drop the cost of all your software purchases with a Campus Agreement to below what it would cost your university to use OSS.
OSS isn't free. 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. Don't forget support costs!!!
I'd highly recommend calling your Microsoft rep and start negotiating. I doubt you'll be able to justify OSS to management. What you will be able to do is get a campus agreement and provide software to your whole campus community and pick up premier support for your sysads for close to what you are already paying.
I will warn you that you are moving into Microsoft's subscription model doing this, but you will win concessions by doing this.
I absolutely agree that the problems with OSS solutions need to be considered, but to say that OpenOffice 'sucks, compared to MS Office' is far too narrow a statement. All products have relative merits and problems, and there is a time and a place for most of them.
Commercial software is often (but not always) not completely matched in terms of features when compared to the closest open source competitor. The key is to find out whether anyone was actually using those particular features and thus whether they'll be missed when they're gone. Office software is a good example because a huge percentage of users really do only use the basic features - one can't argue that OpenOffice does everything that MS Office does, but that's a moot point if OpenOffice does everything that the users need.
Backend software is also a good place to start, but for the opposite reason. While it's likely that many of the features are being used, it's the IT department rather than the end user that is running the software - this makes it far easier to draw up a list of what can and can't be replicated with open source, rely on your 'user' to be able to adjust to a different way of doing things, and so on.
The summary mentions Gimp vs. Photoshop, however, and this is perhaps not such a good place to transition. It's the kind of software that is far more likely to have users who actually do need many of the features. The advice I would give is to make sure you know exactly what your students need from their software - Photoshop licenses are expensive, so when an engineering student needs to make some pretty buttons for their website it seems completely fair to direct them towards Gimp. If, on the other hand, the graphic design department were deprived of Photoshop, I think they would have a very legitimate right to complain - not only because they may well need features that are simply unmatched in the OSS alternative, but also because it is only fair to give students experience of the software that is standard in their industry. Same goes for a lot of CAD software, mathematical programs, and other specialist applications.
Office software, however, isn't used as a specialist tool by many people; it's a general utility for fairly mundane tasks. Everyone's experience will differ, but just as an example this is what I've found using OpenOffice:
Personally I prefer Writer to MS Word. My needs when it comes to word processing are fairly basic, and Writer fulfils them. It also has a few less annoyances than Word in my general day-to-day use - diagrams stay where I put them rather than being randomly scattered around the document when I go back to change a line or two, to take the first example that springs to mind. Obviously there must be some logic to the way that Word handles inline images, but it was never apparent to me. OpenOffice wins for me on word processing.
I have no real need for PowerPoint at the moment, other than to open the occasional .ppt file sent to me by someone else, and for that purpose Impress seems perfectly functional. The fact it's free tips the balance in favour of OpenOffice for my current purposes, but to be honest I'd probably use Keynote if I actually had to produce PowerPoint-style presentations on any regular basis.
Calc is where OpenOffice falls down a bit for me. It's not bad, but it's lacking some of the useful features that Excel has. This ranges from taking three steps to do something I could do in Excel in one, to actually having to export to .xls and use MS Excel on one of the shared machines. I still use Calc on my own machines because it's free, but it's a definite weak spot and Excel is the only component of the MS Office suite that I actually find to be the best on the market.
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
But it is not free-libre.
Nobody whose opinion matters actually gives a shit if it's OMG FREE-LIBRE.
(No, this isn't trolling. It's simply the truth. Free software is not a goal of a university's IT department, getting a quality system is. The two may intersect or they may not as the case may be. In this case, GMail is a poor solution, but not because it's not open source--it's a poor solution because it doesn't effectively allow for horizontal integration. But most open source solutions suck at this, too.)
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
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.
"With open source the file format is always documented, at least in the code itself. So if you want to work with your reference in 5 years without upgrading Endnote to Windows 8 this is the only sane choice."
I'm sure the University just can't wait to reimplement a file format in 5-10 years.
This is a false benefit for anything but the largest, most wealthy organizations with a powerful need to spend tens of thousands of dollars for access to old documents. Organizations which also need the documents badly enough to spend time and resources to open them, even though they let them suffer 'bitrot'.
Organizations which also won't just take the practical & cheap route of just using old software & hardware to retrieve the data.
Yeah, they exist. Sure.
Hypothetical: They ditch their Office Licenses and replace Office with OpenOffice. They save $100,000/year. That $100,000 a year could be used to hire 15-20 techs part time around the year, who can work to ease the transition.
You employ 15 people (likely college students) and get rid of Office. Win/win.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
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 you assume that the needs of the users are being met, all open-source has *many* advantagess that closed-source doesn't (auditability, ease of maintenance, transparency, lack of vendor lock-in.)
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.
If they were as good, great, use it. But they are not, and realistically speaking, almost certainly never will be. Ignoring that in favor of ideology is stupid.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
"Seconded. You'll never get anywhere driving it from the top down with mandatory ....."
I agree, but you could go one step further. Bring in your old laptop of min specs XYZ and we will install the latest and greatest Linux of choices A,B,C at no cost.
Don't give people bats but not balls.
If someone thinks their old laptop of desktop can come up to scratch then they are likely to be a supporter of the idea.
For the record: We did this with our staff and branch network at work.