Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

8 – Exploring Open Source for Educators: We’re Not in Kansas Anymore – Entering OS
prietary platforms like eCollege (http://www.ecollege
.com). During the same period, eCollege reportedly
charged between $70 and $100 US per course enrollment
per term for a fully hosted solution (Wright, August 2,
2005). Unfortunately, for smaller institutions or pilot
projects—economies of scale don’t apply. While exclusive
Blackboard or eCollege licences may be too costly,
pooling with other small users could make costs manageable.
In some instances, this has lead to the creation
of licence brokerage/consolidation. One example of this
is Open School’s (2006) Online Consortium in British
Columbia, Canada. This consortium brokers WebCT
licences for its members. Even with brokers, licensing
can still be expensive for a small pilot. An institution or
group’s return on investment can be much more promising
using a comparable freely sourced product like
Moodle, Sakai Project, or ATutor, especially when leveraging
in-house technological expertise.
In addition to up-front costs, and unlike proprietary
commercial competitors, freely sourced learning platforms
have no charges for upgrades other than the resources
already committed—no new licences to buy or
renew from year to year. While a certain amount of
technological knowledge and skill is necessary to deploy
a freely sourced option, that is just one component necessary
for successful adoption. Appropriate hardware
capable of running the programs, as well as appropriate
connectivity, or access to it, are also necessary. So, while
you may not pay for the program, you may pay for the
necessary hardware (computer, server, etc.), and possible
Internet service upgrades (depending on what you
are planning to do), as well as the technical expertise to
leverage it.
Many times, these key elements of technological experience
and hardware are already present in your
school or institution. Maybe you’re a programmer yourself.
In that case, you are able to leverage the power of
open source and free software right now. If you have the
hardware and Internet services necessary to run the
programs, you are even farther ahead. Schools and institutions
without these advantages will need technical
support to deal with program source code. Most organizations
like public schools, post-secondary institutions
or small to medium-sized private schools have at least
one technology employee with programming experience
already working for, or contracted to them. Generally,
people with programming experience are already converts
to open source and free software thinking. The
issue then becomes how much of the employee’s time
can be assigned to a freely sourced project.
If you are thinking about seriously investigating
freely sourced options, your best bet is to have a technology
expert from your organization, and some potential
end-users (known early adopters of technology)
review possible alternatives for considerations such as
ease of installation, implementation, data conversion,
and use. Keep in mind that freely sourced technologies
are evolving rapidly. (This is one of the major problems,
and worthy of a little more discussion). Be sure to revisit
open source and free software as alternatives for your
software/application needs periodically, and consider
making freely sourced options a standard element of
your regular software reviews. As for existing hardware
needs, those will be based on the type of programs you
want to run, who will access them, and how. If you determine
that freely sourced software will work for you,
and you will be moving people from proprietary commercial
platforms to open source and free software options,
you will need a change management plan. This is
one of the key strategies for lasting conversion. The
topic of change management is beyond the scope of this
chapter, however. For this aspect of migration, I strongly
recommend John P. Kotter’s Leading Change (1996).
Ultimately, open source and free software programs are
low cost, rather than no cost, alternatives to proprietary
commercial products.
MISCONCEPTIONS 2 AND 3: LOW QUALITY AND
INABILITY TO COMPETE WITH PROPRIETARY
COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS
Quality assurance in open source and free software is
primitive and rudimentary: if people like it, they will
download it, use it, develop it and redistribute it; if they
don’t like it, they’ll ignore it or pan it in reviews. In this
arena only the fittest survive. Freely sourced programs
and applications are usually a labour of love. People
develop them because they like to. In fact, many freely
sourced applications are quickly approaching the ease of
use and status of proprietary commercial products: evidence
the increasing adoption of GNU/Linux (“Linux”)
as an operating system. Paul Graham (2005), a premier
online developer and writer, compared the infiltration of
freely sourced software into the market as “the architectural
equivalent of a home-made aircraft shooting
down an F-18”. According to Graham (2005), freely
sourced software can teach business three main lessons:
“(1) that people work harder on stuff they like, (2) that
the standard office environment is very unproductive, and
(3) that bottom-up often works better than top-down”.
A sure harbinger of increasing quality is the notice
commercial proprietary developers are paying to open
source and free software programs. A review of the rise
104 Education for a Digital World