06/20/07 Cross University Open-Source Collaboration

06/20/07 Goal Offer rationale for open collaboration and share experiences I will be asking questions of you throughout!

06/20/07 Overview of Presentation Why open source software (OSS)? Rescomp's Environment and Experience Your Environment and Experience Moving forward Discussion

06/20/07 Open vs Closed Open –Dependent on community rather than vendor –Can customize as needed –Potentially larger support base Closed –Vulnerable to vendor's business decisions –Staff aren't necessarily needed for modifications

06/20/07 Must we be open? Public funding – public goods Student staff may learn more from OSS It's not obvious either way. However, 'should' or 'can'...it's fun!

06/20/07 Observations Residential Networks within Universities have a number of shared “problem domains”. Not all Residential Networks have the same problem domains or resources. Resnet provides a coordination point for those who could benefit from working together.

06/20/07 Example Projects Kuali – Core systems infrastructure and apps Sakai – Educational Collaboration Tillikum – Housing Info Managment NetReg – Network Access Control VT WSUS – Windows Patch Management And many more...how will we know what's available?!

06/20/07 Rescomp's Environment Approximately 50 staff members 8000 node network Customer support for ~7000 residents 30 *nix or BSD servers 8 student staff working on software Oversight by peer review and several career staff

06/20/07 Rescomp's Experience Bugzilla – 6 years of use TWiki – 1.5 years of use Mailman – 1 instance for more than 6 years PostgreSQL – several instances for most of site for 6 years Request Tracker – in development Have not opened in-house applications but have participated in wider OSS community through various uses.

06/20/07 Issue Tracking In-House –We have an integrated helpdesk that frontline support staff use. –Also a web-based computer lab issue tracker OSS –Bugzilla – for use internally for both software and non-software requests –Request Tracker – replacement for simple Mailman lists

06/20/07 Bugzilla Business Need –Issue Tracking –Procurement Technical Challenges –Requires management of LAMP stack Results –Met small group needs over 6 years –Awkward for non-software issues

06/20/07 Documentation/Collaboration In-House –Docbook SGML wrapper OSS –Twiki – Used for team coordination, meeting minutes, one-off issue tracking –Mailman archives for searching –Subversion hooks into Bugzilla

06/20/07 TWiki Business Need –Centralized site-wide documentation Technical Challenge –Maintenance –Performance Results –Increased and more useful documentation –Additions through plugins were very useful

06/20/07 User Management In-House –Sync scripts in cron written in perl OSS –OpenLDAP – Used for several purposes as well as user management –Samba – Used in combination with OpenLDAP for Windows integration –Jxplorer – Manipulation of LDAP directory –PostgreSQL – Long term reliable storage of user data for use in web apps

06/20/07 PostgreSQL Business Need –Storage of user information Technical Challenge –Requires tuning Results –Received fantastic support through community mailing lists, IRC, and documentation.

06/20/07 Server Management In-House –ConfMan – Configuration management –Misc scripts in crons OSS –Nagios – Monitoring and issue tracking with Bugzilla –FreeBSD – Our OS of choice –NFS, PAM, LDAP – Technologies we used to provide a consistent working environment

06/20/07 FreeBSD Operating System Business Need –Support for windows workstations Technical Challenges –Managing many server configurations with small part-time staff. Results –Easily manageable lightweight server infrastructure –Great support from mailing lists and documentation

06/20/07 Our In-House Software Current Applications –NAC –Helpdesk –Web-based Computer Lab Management –Hour tracking for front-line support staff –Security Case Handler

06/20/07 Q/A and Info Gathering What is your environment like? What has been your experience with OSS? What have you written in-house?

06/20/07 Possible Approaches Rewrite applications together Release what we have and let others modify Sanitize & Generalize Agree on standards that allow interoperation and then divide and conquer

06/20/07 Challenges for Opening Up Would require a high degree of customizations Ontology and Business Logic specific to departmental groups, i.e. alphabet soups. IP Conflicts with University

06/20/07 Will opening up work for you? We've heard about a few environments. We've seen some challenges and approaches. How can we find out?

06/20/07 What have people tried? Who has: –...tried incorporating someone's work? –...released their in-house software?

06/20/07 What could be next? Community Portal - Sakai? Standards Group - Kuali? Sharing what we have: –Software Registry, e.g. Sourceforge –Mailing lists –BoF – Tuesday 11:30am in IR/PS

06/20/07 Discussion Will Open Source work for ResNet? Is Kuali enough? How can we avoid “design by committee”? What can we do now?

06/20/07 Evaluations Go to “Presentation Evaluations” at: