on Mon, Feb 09, 2004 at 04:12:19PM +0000, Yishay Mor (y.mor@ioe.ac.uk) wrote:
> Abstract
>
> Factors affecting the use of open source software in tertiary education
> institutions by David G. Glance, Jeremy Kerr and Alex Reid
>
> Open Source Software (OSS) is software that has been released under a
> license which requires the distribution of the software?s source code
> with any binaries.
False.
"Doesn't prohibit" would be a better description. See the Debian Free
Software Guidelines or OSI Open Source Definition for the cannonical
definitions.
> It is often available at no cost and is mostly supported by developers
> providing their services for free.
False.
It's supported by individuals and/or organizations who make at least
some of their work freely available. Much of this work is directly
compensated, or is supported by other activities (hardware sales, data
analysis, other business operations).
> Considerable interest has been shown in OSS by tertiary education
> institutions (TEIs) because of the promise of a reduced total cost of
> ownership of the software, potentially better support, freedom from
> vendor lock?in, ability to tailor the software and pedagogic benefits
> of being able to view the source code.
Better.
Though "ability to view source code" itself doesn't promise freedom, and
may in many case restrict it (trade secrets / NDAs).
> To find out the extent of use of OSS by TEIs in Australia, New Zealand
> and the United Kingdom, a survey was sent out to technical personnel
> at all TEIs in these countries. The results of the survey show that
> OSS is already being used by all TEIs who responded to the survey and
> that the major reasons for this was lower Total Cost of Ownership and
> freedom from software vendor dependence. It is clear however that the
> majority of the OSS software being used is in server infrastructure
> with a lesser amount being used on normal desktop machines.
>
>
> http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_2/glance/
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
"Just another million years," said Marvin, "just another quick
million. Then I might try it backwards. Just for the variety, you
understand."
- HHGTG
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