4 ms·

At my university, we are heavily dependent upon Microsoft. The reasoning is that it has more features than the open source equivalents. It was pointed out tha

At my university, we are heavily dependent upon Microsoft. The reasoning is that it has more features than the open source equivalents. It was pointed out that the over $1 million a year given to Microsoft could be used to implement those features in the open source tools and it wouldn't take long to get there. That was in the 1990's. We now give Microsoft many more millions a year and have ever since.

api 6y ago
Who would do that implementation? Who would manage it? Who would lead it?
- fsflover 6y ago
  Anyone willing to get $1 million.
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    That doesn’t get you very far. Maybe a small team of developers for a year. But, maintenance and hosting cost more.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      Most of free software is supported gratis. You do not need full support, just specific things for your use case.
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      Anybody willing to get $1 million '90s dollars. They probably spend more now.
gr2zr4 6y ago
And maybe you still don't know how many millions they give to the software houses to use their statistical packages :)
thebean11 6y ago
> It was pointed out that the over $1 million a year given to Microsoft could be used to implement those features in the open source tools and it wouldn't take long to get there. $1 million to implement the features sure, but what about actually hosting and administering the open source software? On call engineers aren't cheap and it's going to break on finals week.
- _revy 6y ago
  Don't most universities host their own software?
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    It’s a mix. Current ERP solutions for higher ed are offered self-hosted or SaaS. Ancillary solutions are moving quickly towards SaaS only. Larger R1 schools are more likely to have solutions they built entirely in-house. Most schools have highly customized versions of COTS products. Source: I work for a leading supplier of those solutions.
  - larrywright 6y ago
    I’m not sure about most, perhaps some do but the ones I’m aware of are using Office365 or similar.
  - smt88 6y ago
    A few years ago they did, but Google, Microsoft, and some of the cloud LMS companies have started to shift them onto the cloud. As someone who had a university IT dept as a client, it's honestly much better for the school. University IT is almost universally a disaster and bottleneck.
  - protomyth 6y ago
    LMS we still host (Moodle), but student registration is just cheaper and easier to get a company to host (We use Empower). I've noticed even the strapped for money TCUs have hosted LMS more often than not. We went against the grain on that one. Office365 is just so cheap for students (The e-mail is free if you just use that) that it makes total sense to pick that.
AshamedCaptain 6y ago
And Microsoft just keeps using that money to constantly rewrite their own software for no apparent reason these days. It's like the worst of bazaar development (cascade of attention deficit teenagers in full glory) and propietary software (you can't no longer support it when the teenagers abandon it). We are still waiting for Teams to support features that Lync/SFB supported on day 1. But that does not prevent them from trying to force Teams onto O365 users (by all but abandoning SFB).
smt88 6y ago
The alternative to most proprietary software is absolutely not "build it ourselves". Whatever your school is/was using Microsoft for is not a $1M/year expense. It might not even be doable for $100M/year. You have to spread the costs across multiple orgs and hundreds of programmers. You can do that by paying a centralized institution for proprietary software or by joining an open-source project. If there is no open-source project, you have to create one, and then you're potentially years away from getting something that's a true alternative. If schools don't like proprietary licenses, they should bargain together for something better.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > Whatever your school is/was using Microsoft for is not a $1M/year expense. It might not even be doable for $100M/year. so how come the university i've been (Bordeaux, ~55k students / 3k staff) almost exclusively uses Linux and free software and does not have a computing budget in the hundred thousands ?
  - smt88 6y ago
    You're refuting a point I did not make. I was responding to someone who suggested that schools should build their own critical software. If there's a good FOSS option already, they should absolutely use it. But there isn't always that option. Also, I guarantee that the school has at least 5-10 tech people, which means computing expenses are approaching $1M when you factor in benefits. Free software requires a larger in-house staff to customize and maintain it, even if the initial cost is low.
    - jcelerier 6y ago
      > their own critical software. which critical software are those ?

api 6y ago

Who would do that implementation? Who would manage it? Who would lead it?

fsflover 6y ago
Anyone willing to get $1 million.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  That doesn’t get you very far. Maybe a small team of developers for a year. But, maintenance and hosting cost more.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    Most of free software is supported gratis. You do not need full support, just specific things for your use case.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    Anybody willing to get $1 million '90s dollars. They probably spend more now.

gr2zr4 6y ago

And maybe you still don't know how many millions they give to the software houses to use their statistical packages :)

thebean11 6y ago

> It was pointed out that the over $1 million a year given to Microsoft could be used to implement those features in the open source tools and it wouldn't take long to get there. $1 million to implement the features sure, but what about actually hosting and administering the open source software? On call engineers aren't cheap and it's going to break on finals week.

_revy 6y ago
Don't most universities host their own software?
- alistairSH 6y ago
  It’s a mix. Current ERP solutions for higher ed are offered self-hosted or SaaS. Ancillary solutions are moving quickly towards SaaS only. Larger R1 schools are more likely to have solutions they built entirely in-house. Most schools have highly customized versions of COTS products. Source: I work for a leading supplier of those solutions.
- larrywright 6y ago
  I’m not sure about most, perhaps some do but the ones I’m aware of are using Office365 or similar.
- smt88 6y ago
  A few years ago they did, but Google, Microsoft, and some of the cloud LMS companies have started to shift them onto the cloud. As someone who had a university IT dept as a client, it's honestly much better for the school. University IT is almost universally a disaster and bottleneck.
- protomyth 6y ago
  LMS we still host (Moodle), but student registration is just cheaper and easier to get a company to host (We use Empower). I've noticed even the strapped for money TCUs have hosted LMS more often than not. We went against the grain on that one. Office365 is just so cheap for students (The e-mail is free if you just use that) that it makes total sense to pick that.

AshamedCaptain 6y ago

And Microsoft just keeps using that money to constantly rewrite their own software for no apparent reason these days. It's like the worst of bazaar development (cascade of attention deficit teenagers in full glory) and propietary software (you can't no longer support it when the teenagers abandon it). We are still waiting for Teams to support features that Lync/SFB supported on day 1. But that does not prevent them from trying to force Teams onto O365 users (by all but abandoning SFB).

smt88 6y ago

The alternative to most proprietary software is absolutely not "build it ourselves". Whatever your school is/was using Microsoft for is not a $1M/year expense. It might not even be doable for $100M/year. You have to spread the costs across multiple orgs and hundreds of programmers. You can do that by paying a centralized institution for proprietary software or by joining an open-source project. If there is no open-source project, you have to create one, and then you're potentially years away from getting something that's a true alternative. If schools don't like proprietary licenses, they should bargain together for something better.

jcelerier 6y ago
> Whatever your school is/was using Microsoft for is not a $1M/year expense. It might not even be doable for $100M/year. so how come the university i've been (Bordeaux, ~55k students / 3k staff) almost exclusively uses Linux and free software and does not have a computing budget in the hundred thousands ?
- smt88 6y ago
  You're refuting a point I did not make. I was responding to someone who suggested that schools should build their own critical software. If there's a good FOSS option already, they should absolutely use it. But there isn't always that option. Also, I guarantee that the school has at least 5-10 tech people, which means computing expenses are approaching $1M when you factor in benefits. Free software requires a larger in-house staff to customize and maintain it, even if the initial cost is low.
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    > their own critical software. which critical software are those ?