The Cathedral, The Bazaar, and the Academy Mitchell Kapor EDUCAUSE October 2004

Goals for this Talk Describe instances of actual and proposed collaborative funding models for software for higher education Look specifically at Chandler and Sakai, two instances of open source projects being developed with collaborative funding Understand more about opportunities and challenges of open source in the higher education environment

Original Chandler Vision Open Source Personal Information Manager , CALENDAR, contacts, tasks, free-form items Fresh design Easy sharing and collaboration Linux, Mac, and Windows Modular and extensible platform

Brief History Originated in the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) in San Francisco First conceived as PC client with peer-to-peer networking Interaction with Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Common Solutions Group Westwood - version of Chandler specifically for higher education

Drivers Higher education requirements, especially with calendaring, not being well met by commercial vendors High cost of existing solutions Desires to move away from proprietary lock-in and toward open, standards-based software

Requirements Support campus use patterns –10,000+ users –Centralized storage –Nomadic access Security –Only gets more important Integration –IMAP, LDAP… –Blackberry…

Funding and Process Andrew W. Mellon $1.5MM 25 schools in Common Solutions $50,000 each Total $2.75MM over three years Westwood Advisory Council (WAC) Regular consultations

Status 0.4 (now) experimentally useable 0.5 (Q1 2005) “dog food” Kibble (2005) Westwood ( )

Assessment Accomplishment has been slower than plan, but stakeholders are (cautiously) optimistic Pace of progress is increasing Software is hard

Lessons Ambition has a price –Simultaneous effort at innovation in the front end and back end ups the ante dramatically –Cross-platform delivery of graphical user interface ia hard –Dependence on many other open source projects of differing maturity increases complexity Innovation proceeds better through stages, not a “great leap forward” –Major change in network architecture from P2P to WebDAV

Sakai Course management system Goals –Cost savings –Standardization –Model for future

Participation Core Schools: –Indiana –MIT –Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor –Stanford Foundations –Andrew W. Mellon –William and Flora Hewlett uPortal Consortium Open Knowledge Initiative

Sakai Educational Partners $10,000 per annum Minimum three year commitment 50 schools so far Early access to and participation in Sakai

Educore Proposal by Ira Fuchs at Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Coordination of development, distribution, and maintenance of key academic and administrative software functions 1,000 colleges and $5,000- $25,000 per annum

Why “Educore”? Conventionally, open source projects originate in a programmer’s desire to scratch own itch May be sub-optimal in meeting needs Is it possible to be (somewhat) directive yet remain open? –In general, efforts at “industrial policy” have been failures –But the DoD-funded ARPAnet was a completely stunning success

Is Open Source Special? Uniqueness of open source is as an alternative model of production Openness and transparency permit lower barriers to entry and coordination costs Leverage!!! BUT open source is not pixie dust to be sprinkled on a project “Anyone can…” Hidden Costs

What Open Source Needs to Succeed Technical infrastructure Community infrastructure –Formal governance –Licensing –Clear values and principles –Practices which integrate principles by using tools Where the Rubber Hits the Road –New participants and projects –Decision-making