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Cannot agree more with this. Open source software is a perfect fit with public institutions. I don't understand why any government uses proprietary platforms. I

by FD3SA 12y ago

Cannot agree more with this. Open source software is a perfect fit with public institutions. I don't understand why any government uses proprietary platforms. It would be cheaper and far more effective to hire a dozen open source devs to cater a particular platform to the public's needs, and have it be open and free to use forever. Developers aren't that expensive compared to software licenses for thousands of machines. As I understand, Germany and many European countries are heading in this direction.

stephenr 12y ago
While I agree that Open Source can form part of a good solution I think there needs to be a distinction made between proprietary software that the institution controls, and proprietary SaaS solutions like Google offers. E.g., In the 90s and early 2000's Novell had a big presence in Universities/etc, providing network systems such as eDirectory (their Directory Services stack) Groupwise (email) etc. Yes these were proprietary, but they were also controlled by the customer - if you wanted to switch to OpenLDAP or AD or whatever, you could dump your whole Directory Services tree to LDIF file(s) and import them elsewhere. If you wanted to migrate from Groupwise to something using MBOX or even to Exchange, there were tools to do so, and there was never any need to worry about "well what happens with the data?" I have no problem with a school or government using proprietary software, so long as the data created remains in the institution's hands, and is in a format that can be easily read by or exported to alternative formats. I absolutely have a problem when educational institutions say "yeah we're going to use this solution for email because it's free" - the students have no fucking choice, and there is little or no consideration given to how the company uses the data.
Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
I've been working on KnightOS [1], which is like Unix for calculators. I'm hoping to use it as a platform upon which to evangelize open source software with students. Maybe we should have more open-source investment in more parts of the student life? You just have to pick something to improve and get started. [1] http://www.knightos.org http://www.knightos.org
rattray 12y ago
Coming from recent experience in EdTech, and also as a recent grad, this is a little idealistic. > It would be cheaper and far more effective to hire a dozen open source devs to cater a particular platform to the public's needs, and have it be open and free to use forever. Unfortunately, not many people in Higher Ed are technologists. Even hiring devs to work on open source tools isn't a good solution since most are inept at managing technology. The result of this kind of thinking is Moodle and Sakai, LMS's that have faded and failed. They're terrible to use and incredibly outdated. Horses, Camels, Committees, and all that. On the other hand, Instructure makes a LMS called Canvas, which is open-sourced under a restrictive license. It's a Rails app on github. The tech is as much of a joy to use as anything in EdTech. They also have an impressive salesforce and have grown remarkably fast. They're due for an IPO soon.
mattzito 12y ago
Oh man - government agencies, in many cases, the least equipped to "hire a dozen open source devs". Think about how many local governments and school districts they are - they couldn't possibly hire developers and manage the development and customization of open source platforms when they can barely keep their own IT running correctly. In fact, that's a huge driver for the adoption of SaaS in local government - IT is such a scare resource. School districts often have only a handful of IT people for thousands or tens of thousands of students - they certainly couldn't afford to hire developers to customize, nor do they have the skills to manage them. I understand the open-vs-closed concerns, and agree that open source is better, but SaaS is a godsend for local government.
silvestrov 12y ago
Experience from Denmark: when public institutions make it-systems they almost always fail. The "exam submission system" for primary schools failed completely the first two times when the pupils was sitting the exam. The police completely cancelled their new it-system after spending $90 million. etc. So when the (Danish) public sector makes stuff that's worse than BLACKBOARD, it might for the time being be the least of the evils to outsource it to the private sector.
jrells 12y ago
I agree too but there are non-technical problems. Educational institutions regularly spend money on software when some CS students could do it better and cheaper over a summer. The people making these decisions are non-technical and risk averse.
- ChicagoBoy11 12y ago
  This times one billion.
- curun1r 12y ago
  > when some CS students could do it better and cheaper over a summer And then move on, leaving an unmaintained chunk of code that, while possibly better than the third-party software, instantly becomes a liability of unmaintained code. There's a reason why contractors have a bad reputation in the industry for the code they deliver. It's only developers that know they'll have to live with their work for the foreseeable future that put thought and effort into maintainability. The only way that your "CS students over the summer" plan could work is if the University put a ton of effort into bootstrapping an open source community. Even then, it's doubtful they could create something that would be appealing enough to work on. Academia has a contractor-like reputation for producing code bases that are mostly only intelligible to the sole developer that worked on it. Personally, I'd put my money on a non-profit third-party organization like Khan Academy to be able to design something that gets traction. They know the space, have world-class engineers and would be able to generate enough PR to start a community around a tool that they open source.

by FD3SA 12y ago

stephenr 12y ago

While I agree that Open Source can form part of a good solution I think there needs to be a distinction made between proprietary software that the institution controls, and proprietary SaaS solutions like Google offers. E.g., In the 90s and early 2000's Novell had a big presence in Universities/etc, providing network systems such as eDirectory (their Directory Services stack) Groupwise (email) etc. Yes these were proprietary, but they were also controlled by the customer - if you wanted to switch to OpenLDAP or AD or whatever, you could dump your whole Directory Services tree to LDIF file(s) and import them elsewhere. If you wanted to migrate from Groupwise to something using MBOX or even to Exchange, there were tools to do so, and there was never any need to worry about "well what happens with the data?" I have no problem with a school or government using proprietary software, so long as the data created remains in the institution's hands, and is in a format that can be easily read by or exported to alternative formats. I absolutely have a problem when educational institutions say "yeah we're going to use this solution for email because it's free" - the students have no fucking choice, and there is little or no consideration given to how the company uses the data.

Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago

I've been working on KnightOS [1], which is like Unix for calculators. I'm hoping to use it as a platform upon which to evangelize open source software with students. Maybe we should have more open-source investment in more parts of the student life? You just have to pick something to improve and get started. [1] http://www.knightos.org http://www.knightos.org

rattray 12y ago

Coming from recent experience in EdTech, and also as a recent grad, this is a little idealistic. > It would be cheaper and far more effective to hire a dozen open source devs to cater a particular platform to the public's needs, and have it be open and free to use forever. Unfortunately, not many people in Higher Ed are technologists. Even hiring devs to work on open source tools isn't a good solution since most are inept at managing technology. The result of this kind of thinking is Moodle and Sakai, LMS's that have faded and failed. They're terrible to use and incredibly outdated. Horses, Camels, Committees, and all that. On the other hand, Instructure makes a LMS called Canvas, which is open-sourced under a restrictive license. It's a Rails app on github. The tech is as much of a joy to use as anything in EdTech. They also have an impressive salesforce and have grown remarkably fast. They're due for an IPO soon.

mattzito 12y ago

Oh man - government agencies, in many cases, the least equipped to "hire a dozen open source devs". Think about how many local governments and school districts they are - they couldn't possibly hire developers and manage the development and customization of open source platforms when they can barely keep their own IT running correctly. In fact, that's a huge driver for the adoption of SaaS in local government - IT is such a scare resource. School districts often have only a handful of IT people for thousands or tens of thousands of students - they certainly couldn't afford to hire developers to customize, nor do they have the skills to manage them. I understand the open-vs-closed concerns, and agree that open source is better, but SaaS is a godsend for local government.

silvestrov 12y ago

Experience from Denmark: when public institutions make it-systems they almost always fail. The "exam submission system" for primary schools failed completely the first two times when the pupils was sitting the exam. The police completely cancelled their new it-system after spending $90 million. etc. So when the (Danish) public sector makes stuff that's worse than BLACKBOARD, it might for the time being be the least of the evils to outsource it to the private sector.

jrells 12y ago

I agree too but there are non-technical problems. Educational institutions regularly spend money on software when some CS students could do it better and cheaper over a summer. The people making these decisions are non-technical and risk averse.

ChicagoBoy11 12y ago
This times one billion.
curun1r 12y ago
> when some CS students could do it better and cheaper over a summer And then move on, leaving an unmaintained chunk of code that, while possibly better than the third-party software, instantly becomes a liability of unmaintained code. There's a reason why contractors have a bad reputation in the industry for the code they deliver. It's only developers that know they'll have to live with their work for the foreseeable future that put thought and effort into maintainability. The only way that your "CS students over the summer" plan could work is if the University put a ton of effort into bootstrapping an open source community. Even then, it's doubtful they could create something that would be appealing enough to work on. Academia has a contractor-like reputation for producing code bases that are mostly only intelligible to the sole developer that worked on it. Personally, I'd put my money on a non-profit third-party organization like Khan Academy to be able to design something that gets traction. They know the space, have world-class engineers and would be able to generate enough PR to start a community around a tool that they open source.