I came across this reference from Linux du-Québec to a study (in French) on the comparitive costs of proprietary and open source portals in education. The study was conducted by Michael Wybo, a visiting professor at the Montreal business school, HEC, who specialises in open source. According to Wybo:
Les coûts d’acquisition de la solution logicielle libre sont approximativement la moitié des coûts d’acquisition de la solution propriétaire le moins chère, et cela en tenant compte des coûts de migration d’une technologie à un autre.
[My translation: Acquisition costs for open source are about half the costs of the cheapest proprietary solution, even when taking into account any system migration costs]
The OS system in question is based on the MILLE project (an open source framework for education). According to the comments on the extract, the complete report is available from CRIM, but is not readily available to the public, even though it appears that public money was used to fund this study.
Does anyone have any more information on this study?
Information wants to be free, but who funds Universities?I too am very interested in this report. And I too would like to see information researched by Universities be available. But I am a little more pragmatic — governments now fund a decreasing proportion of University activity (now 30% in Australia) and Universities have to make up the gap through other avenues, e.g. selling reports like this. Research can be for the public good when the public pay for its full cost, but when the public only subsidise it, things get grey.
We fund universities – directly & indirectlyI don’t think that it’s that grey. Our taxes fund this institution and its students to the tune of millions of dollars per year (at the Federal & Provincial level). If I was a private corporation, funding only a portion of this research, I would demand to see the report in its entirety. We, the citizens of this country, should expect the same.
The report may be available; I just haven’t found it yet – so I’m not making any accusations.
The content might not be so importantI think that, as long as educators are given a choice, open source solutions will grow. Cost is not so important actually: I think that many instructors, but not all, will naturally go to open source solutions simply because, on the long run, they are better for the user (here, the instructor).
What is more troubling is that you may have found one more instance of a publicly founded report, which should be public (contains not confidential information), but is kept behind bars.
We have to complain: the public should have unrestricted access to the research it pays for. There are exceptions, of course, because some type of research is for a few people’s eyes only. Think of a security review of New Brunswick hospitals… no need to post that on the Web… but these are exceptions.