Spring Issue 2007
Open Source Software: A New Business Model for Community Colleges
Feature article, by Raul Rodriguez, President
San Joaquin Delta Community College
Stockton, California
Community college leaders now face a refreshing choice: whether or not to participate in the open source software (OSS) community. Unlike the proprietary model of commercial software, open source software is developed in a collaborative, voluntary environment, is free, and is open to modification by the user. The open source business model is responsible for making the Internet, Linux, Apache, UPortal and other free software ubiquitous and successful in their adoption.
If more community colleges choose the open source model, there will be more opportunities to collaborate with our peers as well as with four year institutions. It will also give us the ability to reduce the enormous costs associated with our administrative software so we can reallocate those dollars to the more important technology supporting our students’ learning.
However, in order for us to benefit from such an opportunity, we need to be particularly well-informed as to its advantages for our institutions. This decision must be made by the leaders of our community colleges and not delegated within our organizations. For our colleges to experience the full advantages of this model, our institutions must undergo a major technology shift. The difficulty with such a choice is that it requires some significant reflection on our current environment and where we are heading for the next 15 or more years.
To understand the open source model, we must first understand the proprietary vendor. During our tenure as college leaders, we have been buying software and associated services from vendors who have motives quite different than ours. These vendors are driven by profitability, using their successes to ensure that their intellectual property links us to their future. Unfortunately for us, this process uses the dollars we give them to further increase their sales, marketing and development, which in turn allows them to control our technology, keeping us dependent on their software.
The higher education sector has begun to embrace open source software, and communities are working together with the intention of benefiting each other. These open source communities, similar to the communities that developed Linux and Apache, are comprised of a great number of innovators who focus on solutions for educational institutions. Being collaborative in nature, such communities cannot be duplicated by a single campus or by a proprietary vendor. In higher education, several communities have formed over the last four years. Most notably, there are two 501c3 foundations -- Sakai and Kuali. These communities are comprised of colleges, universities, associations and commercial partners that support the open source model and aide in the development, enhancement, and distribution of software solutions. They also make those solutions available to any institution that wishes to use such solutions without license fees. Commercial partners are welcomed and encouraged to become part of the community because they help ensure the sustainability of the solutions by providing the institution’s functional and/or technical support beyond what the institution is capable of maintaining.
While much of the university community has accepted this model, it has not caught the eye of most of the community college leadership. Community college leaders seem to expect that the university sector will develop these solutions for all of higher education. However, we would be well advised to join this important movement for the following reasons:
- Open source solutions are less expensive than proprietary solutions and their associated services.
- The solutions are being developed by and for higher educational institutions.
- These solutions will not continue to lock our future to that of the vendors.
- Open source gives us freedom and is designed to fit our specific community college requirements so that we no longer fall prey to the proprietary vendors’ motives.
It is time for our leadership to acknowledge the merits of this open source business model. We need to make sure that the solutions are appropriate and pertinent to community college environments. The way to do this is to first understand the relative advantages of open source, then join these open source communities, ensuring that they meet our needs, not just the needs of universities.
This is precisely why San Joaquin Delta Community College has chosen to be a full partner in some leading open source initiatives. After attending an open source conference in 2003, we decided that open source has all the properties we value for our college’s future. As a result, we are an equal partner in such initiatives as the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment for Education, and the Kuali Foundation Community Open Source, a finance and student system initiative. Our college has benefited immeasurably from our association with these remarkable people and with their well-designed and easy-to-install solutions.
In short, we, as one community college system, have successfully collaborated in the development of technology that will benefit us as well as other community colleges. We also put ourselves in a position to guide our own destiny in terms of receiving solutions that we own and will continue to build with the assistance of the open source community. This is a very comforting situation!
We encourage more community colleges to join this community. The reason is two-fold. First, we would like to advance these solutions with the benefit of innovative ideas from more community college input. Second, we would like more of our community college colleagues to benefit from a business model which will unquestionably become a preferred business model in the near future. I say this not merely from my own vision of the future of technology, but more importantly, from the view of many of our corporate and individual technology leaders. Their consensus is that software is quickly becoming a commodity that will leave commercial vendors in a very vulnerable position because their current business models will inevitably change. This will only lead to an even more difficult situation for us if we don’t choose open source.
By making the choice to become a part of this important movement, we, as leaders of our institutions, will be able to both guide the technological solutions to our particular challenges as community colleges, and further our mission.
From ICCD's Executive Director:
ICCD is considering planning a conference on technology issues for community colleges and would like to know what technology issues concern you as a community college leader. If there are particular topics in this area that are of interest to you, please email me with your suggestions. Thank you.
Barbara Viniar
