I’ve started a group here on campus to help promote and support the use of open source software on campus. Right now our site is called Open SUNY.
When I tell people on campus that we should consider making the switch to open source software, I often here something like – “Yeah, but who’s going to support it?” I think there are a lot of great support options for open source software. But eventually occurred to me, “Why not round up some open source enthusiasts for starters?”
This is one of the advantages that open source software has over proprietary software. The open source community is filled with enthusiasts who feel an obligation to give back to the open source community by helping others use open source software. I’m one of them, and I assumed that there had to be other faculty/staff on campus who felt the same way. So I tried to find some, and I did. Now we have this little group.
While our new site is still in its infancy (I just set it up yesterday) – the pages will eventually contain information about open source, offer reasons why someone should consider open source, and explain what alternatives are available for mainstream proprietary software that academics often feel wedded too.
Right now the vision for the blog portion will be to post about tips and tricks for particular pieces of open source software. Some of it will be offer tips on working around common problems. Some of it will be about neat ways to use open source software for your research or your teaching.
While some of the posts will be campus specific, I suspect that almost all of the information will be useful for academics on other campuses interested in open source software.
I figure this group can help grease the open source wheels on this campus a bit more. We’ll see.
Check out the site – www.opensuny.org
Is your plan to start networking with open source people at the other SUNY schools, or keep it Fredonia specific?
I do want to start branching to other SUNY schools, but I was going to wait until we had some momentum going here before I started emailing people.
Do you have any plans to start including us students into this? It’d be great if we could help in any way.
Hi Ray,
I absolutely plan on getting students involved in this. I hope to eventually have some student contributors.
Students have a unique perspective because they’re be in a position to know all the things students need to do on campus with their computers (curricular and extracurricular), so they are in the best position to help other students solve their problems with open source.
I assume you’re a Fredonia student. Come see me sometime (or shoot me an email) if you want to talk more about this project.
Andrew,
Are you aware of the 2-3-98 conference held at SUNY Delhi? https://confluence.delhi.edu/x/dYMd
Patrick,
I had no idea. Do you do that every year? It looks awesome.