Vendor Free

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Given at eduWEB in Atlantic City, NJ in August of 2008

Topics Covered: open source topics, blogging, wiki usage,

Presentation Description:
We will discuss the opportunities for use of Open Source solutions and how schools can benefit by being free from vendors and maintenance costs and avoiding political battles over money.

Presentation Abstract:
There are a multitude of open source options available today and nearly all of them are free.  Open Source Solutions are designed with a different motive than proprietary business products.  Open Source Solutions are designed to accomplish a task, not to make a profit, and more often than not the support comes free, directly from the developers of the product rather than a help desk consultant. These products are often designed to be custom tailored to fit your specific needs, anything from custom themes and templates to custom data fields can be added.   

During this presentation we will discuss the theory and meaning of Open Source, as well as discussing where and how best to obtain open source products. We will mention some of the big players in the open source community and their practical application in a university setting.  We will also talk about some the drawbacks of open source and how to determine if these products are right for your institution based on the type of technical resources you have available.

Open Source
  • Ideology of open source
    • Definition of Open Source - http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
      • Free Redistribution
      • Source Code
      • Derived Works
      • Integrity of The Author's Source Code
      • No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
      • No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
      • License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
      • License Must Not Restrict Other Software
      • License Must Be Technology-Neutral
    • Free vs Libre
      • Free - software that costs zero dollars but it copyrighted, and the source code is unattainable
      • Libre - software that may or may not cost dollars, but either way the source code is available, and can be customized to meet individual needs.
  • Applications for Higher Ed
    • Wikis
      • mediawiki - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
      • twiki - http://twiki.org
    • Blogs
      • wordpress - http://wordpress.org
    • News & Events
      • jCal ext for Joomla/Mambo - http://dev.anything-digital.com
      • phpCalendar - http://www.php-calendar.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
      • People Cube -
    • Help Desk Ticketing System
      • IRM (information resource manager) - http://irm.stackworks.net
    • Course Management
      • moodle - http://moodle.org
      • sakai - http://sakaiproject.org
      • Claroline .NET - http://www.claroline.net
    • Portals
      • UPortal - http://www.uportal.org
      • Jetspeed - http://portals.apache.org/jetspeed-1
    • Content Management
      • Joomla - http://www.joomla.org
      • MODx - http://modxcms.com
      • Drupal - http://drupal.org
    • Web Statistics
      • AWStats
    • Virtual Spaces
      • Second Life
    • Presentation Software
      • S5 - http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/
  • Types of Open Source Licensing
    • Creative Commons
    • GPL
  • Places to find open source products
    • open source cms - http://www.opensourcecms.com
    • sourceforge = http://sourceforge.net
  • Open source benefits universities
    • You don't have to rely on a vendor for support and updates
    • The Open Source Community if comprised of folks who both write and use software
    • People write software to solve a problem, not make a profit.  Time and resources are spent on functionality, not advertising and sales
    • Support comes directly from the developers of the product.
    • Puts the power of support and maintenance in the hands of local tech folks
  • It's a little Scary
    • There are no guarantees with open source
    • You have to trust your techs to be the end of line tech support