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Invest Locally

A community source leader's thoughts on how to break down the barriers to open source adoption.

3/28/2007

By Christopher D. Coppola

The tipping point that makes the better choice an easier one will occur when more of us invest 'locally' in the educational open source communities. 'Close to home,' so to speak. Spending dollars on open source ensures that these communities have the resources necessary to be sustainable over the long term. More spending also attracts more investment in the form of grant funding, venture funding, and other types of investment made by organizations that can add value and fill in the under-developed and missing services. More dollars spent and more investment means lower risks and greater benefits to the entire user community, as the ecosystem grows more diverse and more sustainable.

You might be thinking, "I know open source software isn't free, but my options for spending on it are not clear." Although not as straightforward as buying software licenses from a proprietary vendor, there are many ways to spend your dollars locally on open source software. For instance, you might join the Sakai Foundation and/or Kuali Foundation as more than 100 institutions around the world have. This contributes directly to our community's ability to develop great software. You could also pay salaries to employees who contribute their time and energy to these open source projects, thereby becoming project experts. You could spend money to implement and support these solutions on your own campus. You could spend dollars on subscription support agreements for these products from commercial support providers that will safeguard your production use of these systems. You could hire consultants to help customize your unique environment, pay hosting providers to run your systems for you, or pay to have your staff and users trained to use these systems. As you can see, there are a variety of ways to spend locally on open source. The point is that you need to spend money. When I talk to my friends about my family's choice to spend locally on sustainable food, many ask me why I do it. My answer is simple. If I don't, who will? My answer is the same with open source software in education. I choose to invest in it, and I'm suggesting that to reach the tipping point, you must too. Spending dollars, even in small ways, gets the ball rolling.

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