Since few years ago, the knowledge about free software and open source software has been extended to a bigger percentage of population. One of the groups that can obtain many benefits from this type of software is the university, due to its special characteristics.
Inputs and benefits of FOSS
The use of FOSS has many benefits compared with proprietary software, and it encourages some of the main higher education values. One of the most visible benefits of the free software is the very low or non-existent cost of the software purchase. Although some licenses allow collecting money for the software, it is unusual.
The cases where it is required the payment of some fees is because there is a technical support available. But, many times this support is offered by the forums through the collaboration of many users. The use of FOSS in higher education therefore allows for devoting greater budgetary items to other areas such as Research and Development or to the improvement of the equipment of the laboratories.
FOSS lets us to analyse how a software program works and gives us the opportunity to adapt it to the needs of the university community and allows the study of the code by the students. Another advantage of the source code analysis is that any user can collaborate by analysing potential vulnerabilities as backdoors and programming security flaws. They can be detected and solved, thus obtaining systems more secure and stable than those offered by proprietary software.
On the other hand, employing FOSS reinforces the fundamental value of the University: “share the knowledge”; as one of the functions of the University is the generation of knowledge to benefit the whole society. The use of FOSS entails the creation of code from the University that will be shared worldwide.
Migration strategies and experiences
In order to change from proprietary software to FOSS, we have observed some non-written rules:
- Configure the core network with FOSS. This step is probably the most complicated. Data servers, network management, security policies need to be re-programmed to the new configuration.
- Change common applications in workstations to FOSS (Office, web browser, photo editor…), maintaining the operating system (OS) and specific applications.
- Install a free/open source operating system, but maintaining the old one (dual boot). Advanced users will use FOSS OS immediately, but non-initiated users will appreciate the coexistence of both systems. If something gets wrong, they can switch to the other OS.
- Install specific applications for the new OS.
- Delete old OS and applications, so the migration has been completed.