I have just recently made a small website with database integration to help an administrative section at my university. I did this as an external consultant.
When the faculty accepts students from otghr universities or colleges their exams are compared to the ones at our faculty and some exams are credited. This process involves both scientific and administrative personell. The faculty receives a lot of requests. Parts of the archieve is now registered in a database, and we have made a web-frontend for students and other interested parts.
While discussing the possibilities for sharing the solution with other similar sections we discussed how to do this. I suggested using OpenSource. There was some sceptisism regarding the possibility of other people using the solution externally and thus being able to sell it. I suggested GNU GPL (the concept anyway) and this was agreed to as an acceptable solution by my peers.
This is just one example of how one may introduce OpenSource at a university. But most of the time the process is difficult because of (healthy) scepticism and the lack of constructive information.
In my opinion a lot of the work lies in making information for the related parties. Scientific and administrative personell need enlightening information.
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This seems to be an almost perfect application of open source. A group of customers needs the same application and they are cooperating. All parties should participate and contribute because they are all stakeholders. However, there is probably some skepticism.
In my company, the fears are:
1. We will develop the software at the cost to our organization and other organizations in the company will use it without contributing.
2. The Darwinian evolution of the software is a problem for most managers in our company. How to predict release dates, etc? How did you handle this? I imagine you set release dates and managed the project traditionally.
Linux development worked so well because I believe the specification was well understood. In most of the products I work on, this is not the case.
Is the development of your project done? Did the other parties contribute or just take?
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> 2. The Darwinian evolution of the software is
> a problem for most managers in our company.
Darwin said something like this: "The surviving species are not the strongest ones, neither the most intelligent ones - but the ones that are best in adapting to their environment".
Furthermore you write:
> How to predict release dates, etc? How did you
> handle this? I imagine you set release dates
> and managed the project traditionally.
This project was really small. It will probably end up at around 65 hours of bilable time. So it is not an industrial size project. Despite its size it still raises a lot of interesting questions.
An OpenSource project in heart means the code should be adaptable because more people will be (hopefully) using the code. Adaption is less important in closed processes.
So according to darwin OpenSource should be a winner ;-)
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>2. The Darwinian evolution of the software is a
>problem for most managers in our company. How to
>predict release dates, etc? How did you handle
>this? I imagine you set release dates and
>managed the project traditionally.
Working with OpenSource often is an informal activity. At least in the beginning of projects. Hence, the people doing the job are doing this on their spare time, or as an additional service.
Formalizing this process will demand a better focus on the work done by the participants. Is this possible?
Yes, universities could have offices coordinating OpenSource development and solutions. However, the problem in the university IT service offices is very much like the one in health services. Expensive drugs from companies with big marketing budgets are preferred before simpler, even free alternatives.
I believe offices as mentioned may lead to lower cost. But then again, no OpenSource developers has marketing divisions to advocate their free solutions :-(
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Anonymous
-
2001-05-10
I wonder whether OpenSource will fully be embraced by the university community given the need to change the culture (ie. skeptism) and attitudes that others (non-developers) may have in using this type of application. It would be interesting to note whether there are any factors contributing to MIT community adoption that may not exist at other universities.
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Anonymous
-
2001-05-13
I can see there being opportunities for sharing and collaborating on applications that assist with our academic lives at MIT. Examples include schedule optimizer spreadsheet (already noted in another thread), and tools for managing club events, club members, or alumni data. I think that the challenges that would exist, in addition to skepticism, include:
- awareness of the open source community for such specific applications
- the great variation in requirements that exists as you move farther away from basic, operating-system-like, functionality -- the risk is that in an open environment, so much additional functionality is added to an application that it is no longer appealing to new users with one or two specific needs.
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> [..]the risk is that in an open environment,
> so much additional functionality is added
> to an application that it is no longer
> appealing to new users with one or two
> specific needs.
In which case work on open standards should be encouraged.
Open standards come about when people have the same need to communicate, but because of reasons like platforms, local history, language, bandwith, etc.. end up with different implementations. You may be reading your email on a WAP-phone, by using Eudora, Internet Explorer and so on (RFC821/RFC822/RFC1521)
In the EU academic standards (credits/scores) now are established. How do the university administrations communicate these standars? Nowadays I guess most of it is written (in emails or on paper). But wouldnt it be nice to have your student credentials transfered electronically when you apply for studies at a new university?
Having standars for use in on-campus-life certainly would make things a bit easier. Importing the fraternity schedule into your pda wouldt be bad. Even better eksporting your studying plans and having the fraternity rescheduling parties based on all the freetime of all members?
Standards, also within academia, would probably encourage the development of proper solutions. What standards would be usefull?
o administrative standards
o academic standards
o social information standards
o more?
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I have just recently made a small website with database integration to help an administrative section at my university. I did this as an external consultant.
When the faculty accepts students from otghr universities or colleges their exams are compared to the ones at our faculty and some exams are credited. This process involves both scientific and administrative personell. The faculty receives a lot of requests. Parts of the archieve is now registered in a database, and we have made a web-frontend for students and other interested parts.
While discussing the possibilities for sharing the solution with other similar sections we discussed how to do this. I suggested using OpenSource. There was some sceptisism regarding the possibility of other people using the solution externally and thus being able to sell it. I suggested GNU GPL (the concept anyway) and this was agreed to as an acceptable solution by my peers.
This is just one example of how one may introduce OpenSource at a university. But most of the time the process is difficult because of (healthy) scepticism and the lack of constructive information.
In my opinion a lot of the work lies in making information for the related parties. Scientific and administrative personell need enlightening information.
This seems to be an almost perfect application of open source. A group of customers needs the same application and they are cooperating. All parties should participate and contribute because they are all stakeholders. However, there is probably some skepticism.
In my company, the fears are:
1. We will develop the software at the cost to our organization and other organizations in the company will use it without contributing.
2. The Darwinian evolution of the software is a problem for most managers in our company. How to predict release dates, etc? How did you handle this? I imagine you set release dates and managed the project traditionally.
Linux development worked so well because I believe the specification was well understood. In most of the products I work on, this is not the case.
Is the development of your project done? Did the other parties contribute or just take?
As you happend to mention Darwin:
> 2. The Darwinian evolution of the software is
> a problem for most managers in our company.
Darwin said something like this: "The surviving species are not the strongest ones, neither the most intelligent ones - but the ones that are best in adapting to their environment".
Furthermore you write:
> How to predict release dates, etc? How did you
> handle this? I imagine you set release dates
> and managed the project traditionally.
This project was really small. It will probably end up at around 65 hours of bilable time. So it is not an industrial size project. Despite its size it still raises a lot of interesting questions.
An OpenSource project in heart means the code should be adaptable because more people will be (hopefully) using the code. Adaption is less important in closed processes.
So according to darwin OpenSource should be a winner ;-)
cmiyachi, you wrote:
>2. The Darwinian evolution of the software is a
>problem for most managers in our company. How to
>predict release dates, etc? How did you handle
>this? I imagine you set release dates and
>managed the project traditionally.
Working with OpenSource often is an informal activity. At least in the beginning of projects. Hence, the people doing the job are doing this on their spare time, or as an additional service.
Formalizing this process will demand a better focus on the work done by the participants. Is this possible?
Yes, universities could have offices coordinating OpenSource development and solutions. However, the problem in the university IT service offices is very much like the one in health services. Expensive drugs from companies with big marketing budgets are preferred before simpler, even free alternatives.
I believe offices as mentioned may lead to lower cost. But then again, no OpenSource developers has marketing divisions to advocate their free solutions :-(
I wonder whether OpenSource will fully be embraced by the university community given the need to change the culture (ie. skeptism) and attitudes that others (non-developers) may have in using this type of application. It would be interesting to note whether there are any factors contributing to MIT community adoption that may not exist at other universities.
I can see there being opportunities for sharing and collaborating on applications that assist with our academic lives at MIT. Examples include schedule optimizer spreadsheet (already noted in another thread), and tools for managing club events, club members, or alumni data. I think that the challenges that would exist, in addition to skepticism, include:
- awareness of the open source community for such specific applications
- the great variation in requirements that exists as you move farther away from basic, operating-system-like, functionality -- the risk is that in an open environment, so much additional functionality is added to an application that it is no longer appealing to new users with one or two specific needs.
> [..]the risk is that in an open environment,
> so much additional functionality is added
> to an application that it is no longer
> appealing to new users with one or two
> specific needs.
In which case work on open standards should be encouraged.
Open standards come about when people have the same need to communicate, but because of reasons like platforms, local history, language, bandwith, etc.. end up with different implementations. You may be reading your email on a WAP-phone, by using Eudora, Internet Explorer and so on (RFC821/RFC822/RFC1521)
In the EU academic standards (credits/scores) now are established. How do the university administrations communicate these standars? Nowadays I guess most of it is written (in emails or on paper). But wouldnt it be nice to have your student credentials transfered electronically when you apply for studies at a new university?
Having standars for use in on-campus-life certainly would make things a bit easier. Importing the fraternity schedule into your pda wouldt be bad. Even better eksporting your studying plans and having the fraternity rescheduling parties based on all the freetime of all members?
Standards, also within academia, would probably encourage the development of proper solutions. What standards would be usefull?
o administrative standards
o academic standards
o social information standards
o more?