[Educational] Open Letter to University IT Decision Makers

Hi.

At the BOF I mentioned a letter I had written to a committee forned  
to evaluate a University-wide web-publishing solution. I have thought  
about editing this further and submitting an Op-Ed to the chronicle  
of higher ed or something, but I am becoming more and more  
disillusioned with dead tree publishing.

Maybe it can start out in the Ed area on plone.org. I hesitate since  
some publications won't publish something once it has been published  
elsewhere (do mailing lists count?)

I am interested in comments and feedback on this opinion piece, and  
how people make the argument for free softare at their institutions.

all the best,
/Jonah

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For a multitude of reasons - business, practical, and ethical -  I  
feel the very strongly that the university should be participating in  
the ecology of free and open source software. Not for the price, but  
for the freedom, control, and commensurate quality of experience that  
free software provides us. This position is consistent with our  
intellectual and academic values, and also translates into greater  
ownership and control over our most valuable processes and assets -  
our knowledge production.

The advantages or participating in an open-source ecology are well  
documented, starting with the classic paper The Cathedral and the  
Bizzare - http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/, to  
trade publications in business (Open Source for the Enterprise   
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensourceent/, to philanthropically- 
funded think tanks - (Software and Collaboration in Higher Education:  
A Study of Open Source Software - http://www.ithaka.org/strategic- 
services/oss). There are very sound business reasons to engage in  
open source development, as IT companies of the 21st century have  
discovered. And, we need look no further than the attempt by  
Blackboard to claim a monopoly on educational technology and online  
collaboration  (http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/08/27/ 
e.learning.dispute.ap/index.html) to be extremely cautious and wary  
of our relationship and commitment to proprietary software.

Open source culture realizes many of the values and ideals that we  
are trying to foster in the processes that these systems embody -  
Namely - collaboration, sharing, trust, communication and community.  
Contrast this with proprietary development models which often promote  
compitition, selfishness, ego and grandiosity. I think it is highly  
likely that the values used to create software percolate throughtout  
the layers of the system, creating an end product which captures and  
catalyzes these values in the application's users.

An open source solution will not be free of charge. Instead flushing  
licensing fees down the toilet, we should invest those funds into a  
custom solution that models our needs, tailored to our culture.  We  
should work with reputable vendor to develop an implementation plan,  
and secure a support contract so that we have confidence in the  
complete lifecycle of the software moving forward.

Open Source development is not a cult, or a religion, but it is  
certainly more than a licence. It is also a development process which  
captures many of the best elements of agile programming techniques,  
and by virtue of the way it is structured, does away with the  
waterfull methods of development.

These considerations should shape our long term strategic thinking as  
we plan for future decades of IT here at the University.

The University desperately needs to fill the technology vacuum that  
exists within our community right now. We are leaking knowledge at an  
alarming rate, lost to third party tools, unstable environments, and  
to corporations vying to grab the eyeballs of our faculty, staff, and  
students. We can use this opportunity to lead the University  
community into the 21st century and beyond.

sincerely,
/Jonah

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jonah Bossewitch
Senior Technical Architect
ccnmtl.columbia.edu
jonah at ccnmtl dot columbia dot edu
212.854.1815
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~