Community Source and Articles, Papers, and Reports

This ECAR research bulletin addresses a unique strength of higher education: its commitment to sharing ideas and promoting open access to knowledge. These values shape IT in higher education as well, as evidenced by many high-profile collaborations such as the Internet, Internet2, and open or community source applications such as Sakai and Kuali. Institutions work with one another on a broad range of projects and services including wide area networking, shared data centers, or disaster recovery. Some institutions share staff, while others outsource their IT operation to a fellow institution. Using findings from the 2007 ECAR study on IT collaboration, this bulletin explores the challenges that suggest that collaboration may become an even more prevalent strategy in the future.

Has the vision proffered for "Open Source 2007" been realized? Will 2010 mark continued progress in the collaborative development of applications software—perhaps one of the most potent tools for addressing the challenging trends confronting IT in higher education?

Open source software and the community source movement are raising questions for administrators about whether and when to adopt or devote resources to software development projects, provoking questions of sustainability, future directions, and total cost of ownership. This research bulletin frames the issues an institution should consider with respect to adding community source products to the portfolio of software, infrastructure, and services that constitute the IT environment.

The author discusses the convergence of best business practices, out of the box ERP systems, community source and the next generation technologies.

Institutions are in search of a new model to fund application software. Community source projects—based on open source philosophy and licensing—offer promise for developing sustainable economics and for advancing the frontiers of innovation.