The full text of this report may be downloaded by clicking on its title: http://www.macalester.edu/infoservices/planning/open-source.pdf. To open it, you will need Adobe's free Acrobat Reader software.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has discovered the open-source software movement and a half-dozen articles have appeared on it in the last two weeks. The articles cover a proposed open source financial system, open source spam control and the nature of open-source software in general. Here is a summary of Macalester's stance.
The articles mix many varieties of open source into over-reaching generalizations. Academics have been writing and sharing programs among themselves for years. Language-testing programs come to mind. This variety of open-source software is centered in a discipline and its community of interest leverages existing organizations, ongoing professional relationships and structured groups. That is, development and support of the program is handled within existing networks of the discipline.
The Chronicle, on the other hand, emphasizes enterprise-wide open-source software, such as that for financial administration and spam control. As usual, the University of Chicago's CIO, Greg Jackson, does an excellent job explaining the ins and outs of the technology, though his article gets a bit tech-y (see http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i05/05b01701.htm). At the enterprise level, the progression began in the back room and is working its way out to the desktop, giving it greater visibility. Thus, the Chronicle's discovery has a flavor of old news to many in the field.
Macalester's spam control strategy utilizes the open source software described in this article: http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i05/05b00801.htm. We have a special server (called q-mail) standing in front of the principal e-mail server that handles preliminary spam blocking. This step is based on "blacklists" from the cooperative SpamHaus service, lists of a few known spammers who send nothing but spam. After that, open source SpamAssassin, also featured in the Chronicle article, can be set by users to strictly or loosely filter the rest, depending on individual preferences. (For more information about SpamHaus and SpamAssassin, as deployed at Macalester, see http://www.macalester.edu/infoservices/planning/spam.html. We still have too much spam getting through, however, because spammers discovered a 'back door' into our system. This hole will be plugged this semester).
The Chronicle's report on plans for an open source financial system for higher education would appear to offer opportunity for us (see http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i03/03a03001.htm). We are examining alternatives to our Jenzabar CX (CARS) system and "free" software sounds good. There are, however, two problems. Unlike most vendor-produced software, the open source developers do not face timeline imperatives - therefore development of such large systems in the open source environment takes years and years. Projected schedules available now most likely will prove inaccurate. Second, other large-scale open source solutions have delivered very raw code that requires large teams of programmers to finish and apply in a particular institution's operating environment. This is less of a strain for big universities than for small liberal-arts colleges. If the software must mesh with a particular school's network services (such as directory services and data-sharing standards), then the remedy of small school cooperation loses much of its effectiveness. There are more pitfalls than are immediately apparent in the very large, newsworthy open source software projects and we must be cautious.
There is another category of open-source application software that is likely to be very successful and sustainable in our environment, however. This is software that is directed to a particular problem or service, is designed for simplicity in support and use, and is supported by an active network of personnel from colleges like ours. Our best example is the experimental course support software called Moodle (see http://moodle.macalester.edu). Response to this service, meant as an experimental pilot project, shows that Macalester faculty and technical staff alike are willing to try something new if it offers simple, direct solutions to a shared problem. At the moment, twenty-eight courses have accounts in the pilot Moodle service, based only on word of mouth. As there is an active support community dedicated to this software and willing to cooperatively troubleshoot and develop code, it is an example of open source that not only is "free" but also is also sustainable.
September 22, 2004
Joel Clemmer
Computing & Information Technology
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Last modified 09/23/2004.