How Do I Start a University Transition To Open Source?

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday February 8, 2009 @05:01AM from the baby-steps-version-control dept.

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)?"

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Re:Declaration of independence by electrosoccertux · 2009-02-09 05:09 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Nietzsche started the "Soviet Russia" meme?
It's a logical fallacy to call into question the credibility of the writer instead of attacking the argument, but might I add that Lawful Good is suicide when your enemy is Chaotic Evil. I believe in bias, because the masses are stupid; but it is only to be used if your point is truth.
When the "enemy" is fighting with incendiary bombs, fighting it Lawful Good would be akin to bringing portable fire extinguisher. No, you need hundreds of those firetrucks that tote the flame-retardant water-soluble mixture, and several fire hydrants for each of them.
This is a slippery slope, but considering all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, and that of all the good men there are, very few of them stand up and fight; why would you disarm those that do? Don't give them a Red Rider BB gun, give them an assault rifle.
This is why the GGGP is correct in his thinking.