Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Article
The Potato Made Me Do It
11/14/2007
Sakai and Kuali. In contrast to the proprietary software that dominated the past, open source software gives institutions new choices. Open source software is freely available to anyone, so institutions can choose when and how to evaluate it. They can also choose to modify or extend it and share the improvements they make with others. These choices result in new characteristics including lower prices, transparency, features designed by and for education, and unprecedented access to software for evaluation purposes. As institutions reward these characteristics, today and in the future, they will be selected, and as they are selected they will be replicated in the DNA of software companies in the future.To some extent, these characteristics are already being rewarded. Rather than relying solely on responses to RFPs, institutions are now downloading open source applications and spending time with them unsupervised by a vendor. This direct access to software enables potential buyers to assess the fit of a particular application much more thoroughly than they can when relying solely on vendor input. Quite simply, the software itself is a much richer source of information about features, functions, and usability. Consequently, institutions and even governments intentionally select characteristics to be replicated.
Having the software open and accessible for inspection and evaluation leads to another change: It increases the focus on service, reliability, and responsiveness. Institutions can hold vendors accountable for these characteristics because the vendor cannot lock in buyers based on software as proprietary intellectual property.
Just as the potato and the gardener play co-evolutionary roles in the garden, all of us -- software and service companies, users, and communities -- play co-evolutionary roles in the enterprise software ecosystem in education. Evolution results from an infinite number of events and choices. It doesn't depend on the consciousness or awareness of those choices. With these natural laws in mind, higher education institutions and other education-focused organizations should think purposefully about the characteristics they reward. The characteristics they reward will be the characteristics selected and replicated in the DNA of software companies.
Christopher D. Coppola is president of the rSmart Group, a provider of open source solutions for education. He is a board member of the Sakai and Kuali foundations.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- Sentrigo Offers Help for Database Patching Woes
Sentrigo Inc. released its new Hedgehog vPatch database security software product Tuesday. The product addresses patching inconsistencies that seem to affect busy Oracle database administrators (DBAs), who don't always have time to test and patch. However, users of Microsoft SQL Server database in the enterprise can take a lesson here too.
- Starfish Launches Higher Ed Retention Solution
Software provider Starfish Retention Solutions has announced the upcoming launch of its first product, Starfish Office Hours. The company said this will be the first in a series of products intended to help higher education institutions improve retention and graduation rates by aiding in the delivery of programs designed to help at-risk student populations.
- Unisys Offers Free Unified Communications Trial
Unisys announced Monday that it is offering companies a free 30-day unified communications trial using Microsoft solutions. The offer is currently available through Microsoft's sales personnel.
- New Mexico Launches Statewide eLearning Initiative
As part of its Innovative Digital Education and Learning initiative (IDEAL-NM), New Mexico is launching a statewide program to standardize on a single electronic learning platform--Blackboard--spanning K-12, higher education, adult education, and government. The initiative will also support a new statewide virtual high school.
- North Carolina Adopts Blackboard for Higher Ed
The University of North Carolina and the North Carolina Community College System have signed on with Blackboard to deploy that company's electronic learning platform across 68 individual campuses.
- Semantic Search: Could the Web Think?
Semantics is a sub-field of linguistics that focuses on meaning making in language. Therefore, the Semantic Web we're still reaching for will be based on a set of definitions, languages, and standards that can base a search on the detection of meaning and not just on a simple character string. The Semantic Web will at least be smarter than the current Web.
