Supporting Open Source Software for Education
The great myth about open source is that in order to adopt an open source application like Sakai, Kuali, or Moodle is that you have to hire developers to support it. It baffles me that this is still how most CIOs seem to understand the option: They can either purchase proprietary software, or they can adopt open source and replace the license fees with development staff.
In a recent article about the Jacobsen v. Katzer case Bruce Parens, the creator of the Open Source Definition (OSD), warns that "taking adversary action against an Open Source project is like boxing with a beehive."
I just read an interesting post from Larry Augustin about the differences between open source businesses in the US and those in Europe. Larry was at the Open Source Think Tank in Paris this week and I'm disappointed I had to miss this one. It's the first European location for the event that's normally in Napa. As Larry says it's a tremendous event.
In the past few months I've attended the most recent Sakai and Kuali community events. Aside from adding to my collection of great polo shirts I'm also reminded how important these face to face gatherings are. While these communities are very productive working as a globally distributed team, there's no substitute for the connections made face to face.
Attendees at these community events often remark that they need a forum to engage campus leaders who don't typically attend the community events.
I'm in seat 14E (middle seat because I forgot to check in online yesterday) on my way to Chicago. I'm headed to the NACUBO conference where I'll be speaking about the Kuali community with Kathleen McNeely (AVP at Indiana University and Kuali Financial System's business leader), and Rich Andrews, Controller at UC Irvine (an investing and implementing institution).
There's an elegantly articulated post in the Blackboard blog about educational choice and diversity and an interesting thread of conversation among the Sakai community commenting on it. Though the post is superficially supportive of choice, openness, and diversity, it seems to me that it's more a marketing attempt to lay claim to the platform on which scholarly technologies will run. In other words, choice and diversity as long as you get to it through the Blackboard platform and pay them for it.
I'm en route to Paris for the 9th Sakai conference Saturday morning writing on the plane. Before boarding I ran across an interesting and very relevant post about the French government support for open source.
The post describes a competitiveness cluster in Paris called SYSTEM@TIC PARIS-REGION, that has established a working group on open source (Logiciel Libre) who's goal is to "help structure the open source ecosystem in the Paris area."
In "The Educational Software Paradox: Can We Learn To Unlearn?," Trent Batson talks about how educational software like the Sakai CLE, Blackboard, Angel, D2L, Moodle, and other systems are caught in a paradox. Though technology would seem to be capable of transforming the way we learn and teach, the systems are stuck reinforcing the status quo. Instead of being designed for transformation they are designed in a way that mirrors the way things are done today and caters to the majority of stakeholders who'd just assume not change.
Late last year I bookmarked the Creative Commons Launches CC0 and CC+ Programs press release to look into at some point. I finally got around to it this week and I'm sure I'll take advantage of these great new tools to help balance the spirit of open sharing of IP with the need to grow a profitable business around open source software.
The new protocols (they are not actually new licenses) are very straightforward and easy to use. This is something CC has always done very well IMHO. So what are they for?