Open source starts class war

After a war usually comes the rhetoric of winning hearts and minds. In the IT theatre of battle taking place in the education sector, the actual war seems to be about capturing the hearts and minds to become the victor. Eamon McGranereports.

Open source, Microsoft and Apple platforms are all locked in combat to be the kingpins of the education sector. The theory is that if you expose students early to certain types of technology, platforms or suites of applications, then they'll be more inclined to want to use that as they head into the business, user and developer worlds.

Open source, a non-propriety platform, has been making some serious inroads into the education sector and many of the country's finest and most well-known universities, colleges and institutes are rolling out open-source applications in the areas of e-learning, student record tracking and archiving systems.

Microsoft, which has many of the same educational bodies tied into licensing agreements for its software, has certainly been noticing this. The company recently signed a major agreement with Chest Ireland, a body that represents the 30 universities and institutes of technology in Ireland. This agreement will see Microsoft integrated into the e-learning development for our educational organisations.

Microsoft maintains that the agreement with Chest wasn't due to it touting for business, rather an approach by Chest to assist in the vision for what it termed 21st century digital learning.

Microsoft did admit however that it is keeping a close eye on the education sector and understands the implications of having the students well versed in its technology.

"We are very interested in the student audience and we recognise they represent the future user, customers and IT professionals," said Bill O'Brien, platform strategy manager at Microsoft.

"We've been investing in education for years and we've been very successful in winning hearts and minds. Yes, there is open source, but that's part of the eco-system and it's healthy competition - they both can co-exist."

With open-source applications free to download, Microsoft's proprietary software is discounted to the education sector by 80 per cent and it's free for disadvantaged schools.

But it's hard to pin down how much the sector is actually worth financially to the software giant because the education sector, for Microsoft also takes into account art galleries, museums, charities and not-for-profit organisations.

Stephen Duggan, education business manager at Microsoft, gives a hint. "I can say our contribution to the Irish schools market was €2.5 million in free licences, support and resources over the last two years. The licences revenue from the schools market would be less than that figure each year."

Despite Microsoft's prevalence in the market, open source is, it seems, showing real legs in the universities and colleges. University of Limerick is in the process of a big project around Sakai - an online collaboration and learning environment. Championing the project is Bob Strunz.

Strunz said the main reason he went open source was the content flexibility.

"The real key factor is the value of the content. That's the single most important factor. We didn't want to be stuck with a closed-source system which might lock our content up and we couldn't take it out and shift it to something else in the future, so Sakai is the system we put in."

Strunz does believe that there is a tug of war going on at the moment between proprietary software and open source, not only in the software arena but within the colleges and universities themselves. "There is a pull towards standardisation and everyone using the same thing such as Microsoft products, but the cost of that is high. There's also a mono culture in many universities and I think the diversity we're injecting into the system is a healthy thing.

"While some IT staff might not be sure about open source, they do need to be exposed to it to prove how sustainable and safe it is and Sakai has been very easy and straightforward. I think open source will roll on and as people realise they're getting a quality product that they want."

And it's not just third level. Open source is seeping down into second level. At Portmarnock Community School, there's a pilot programme under way thanks to assistant principal Donal O'Mahony, who encountered open source as part of a Msc in e-learning he did in DCU. "We've been successfully using an e-learning programme called Moodle in a pilot project. And based on that, we've decided to serve it throughout the school this coming September."

Illustrating the hearts and minds concept, O'Mahony brought Moodle to the school, because of his experience on the DCU course.

He also felt that if he'd chosen a proprietary system, the content could have been at risk. "I can save the data and transport it into a different site, whereas the proprietary software will not allow you to export it into another format."

O'Mahony believes that the success of open source in third level will see it filter into secondary schools. "I used it for fifth-year Leaving Cert history class and in the discussion end of things, you have students using the skills acquired from social software such as Bebo and moving it into a learning environment and there's great work being done with the subjects, such as history, online."

Whether open source and propriety software will sit cosily side by side within schools and colleges or one will win out, remains a moot point. But with €250 million from the National Development Plan set aside for e-learning and the race to steer future generations down one technology path or another, this battle will be well worth watching.