witty title pending

I completely agree with your idea of using Open Source software in the University. I have recently started using Zotero and it does what a researcher needs in terms of referencing and citation. It will even do more when the new version (I guess 1.5) comes out which will contain web synchronization.

It would be a great idea if we can promote using Zotero instead of Endnote in our University and support its development (either by providing them money or helping them in developing the code).

It is interesting that the University has a policy that explicitly states that they're trying to avoid becoming "locked in" to proprietary software, but then the powers that be wouldn't allow staff computers to have a non-proprietary operating system installed, even though it would reduce licence and software costs, and would reduce the problem of virus protection and having to fix the computers when they get jammed up with viruses.

Although, I suppose this (perplexing) bit would cover that:

"b. The University recognises that there may be some situations where proprietary software is well-justified, and does not wish decisions in such cases to be made on spurious “ideological” grounds;"

Thanks for posting this.  I didn't know that the University had a policy like this.

The issue about Endnote is historic. Endnote has been used at UWA for a good number of years and because there were no real alternatives back then. Originally, the Business School used to sell the licenses and this was changed to use central funding to provide every research student with a free copy (thanks to Prof Doug McEachern and Prof Robyn Owens' initiative). These decisions need to be reviewed but I am not sure there is anyone left in IT at UWA that is going to champion these sorts of decisions - the days of FOSS policies or setting adventurous agendas are for all intents and purposes over for the time being.

The issue about you not being able to install Linux on an Arts machine is down to the unwillingness or inability (due to funding constraints) to support multiple platforms. Arts is already slightly permissive in allowing Macs - not all schools allow that. In Computer Science, academics are allowed to run whatever operating system they need to run for their research - but then they are supposed to know how to support this themselves.

We have long advocated an approach where each academic has a virtual PC for the "official" operating environment running on an operating system of their choice (or 2 separate machines).

I couldn't agree more! (Like so: http://www.tamaleaver.net/2008/10/04/thomson-reutersendnote-sue-george-mason-uni-over-zotero/ )

I'm using open source software to write my thesis: LyX (a LaTeX front-end) for typesetting, and BibDesk to manage my references.  I have these installed on my personal Macbook and they work great!  While this has involved a bit of a learning curve, the amount of time I would have spent figuring out how to get Word to do what I wanted would probably have been the same as the time spent learning about LyX. I've also never had a problem with BibDesk crashing whereas Endnote would crash regularly.  Consequently, I'd never go back to Word/Endnote.

I tried to get LyX/LaTeX and BibDesk installed on the computer I use in the lab (I'm off-campus (Subiaco) but we use UWA servers) and encountered problems with downloading/installation due proxies or some such thing that our IT department could not (or would not?) sort out. Surely, since I am using this to write my thesis, it should be available for me to use on lab computers as well?  This sort of problem discourages others from embracing open source software.

Unfortunately, getting the Uni to adopt Zotero on a broader scale could be problematic.  Getting it to abandon EndNote would be downright impossible.

Although the Library is responsible for determining when to upgrade EndNote and also providing support to staff and students, the funding for EndNote comes from somewhere else entirely.  I imagine there would need to be at least a dozen meetings spanning different groups within the University before people even started talking about adopting Zotero.

Just a quick comment regarding Linux in Arts..

We'd love to be able to support it on the desktop, but without a critical mass of academic staff demanding it (and providing academic reasons why it is better than MacOS/Windows for their works), it's not appropriate to spend the University's money on training staff and setting up infrastructure (update/deployment servers) to support it.

As FAHSS's IT unit, we have a responsibility rested on our shoulders of making sure all the computers work, they're all kept secure, and they're all managed to provide the best user experience. Sure, we could cut users lose, let them install (or have installed) linux, and let them use University assets as effectively private machines, but in the end, they're part of a team, and if they can't exchange information between their co-workers on a computer, they will end up coming to us. See original point about training our support staff.

Servers are a different kettle of fish, and they are managed by different staff with different work patterns, and a lot of our servers run Linux. Traditionally we ran a lot of application servers on MacOSX, but with our moves into virtualisation (VMWare - Linux core, natch) we found Linux to be a better choice. Sure, we do run some Windows, and still some MacOSX, but in the end, the service we deliver is more important than how we deliver it. To an extent, we choose whatever will be easiest for the staff to administer. Easy to admin = quick to admin = more time in the day for monitoring and planning = better service.

Regards,

Alex Dawson

IT Manager

Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Agreeing with Alex and MPFL here,

Firstly Zotero is available to any student, for free, off the internet. But perhaps you are arguing that the University should support such a thing. This, using the IT definition of support, would be problematic, to say the least. The reason something is open source in the first place is so that it can be tweaked (this means it's no longer supportable by the support staff, what happens if it stops working?). If there are pages and forums on the internet that support this, but it should be off a students own back to deal with this.

The University cannot offer something it cannot promise will work. Perhaps the alternatives should be pointed out to people, perhaps on the web. But that is certainly another matter, far from the one we are discussing.

Secondly it needs to be made clear that the costs associated with switching to FOSS are not 'free'. The primary consideration when considering the value of a software change or upgrade is the cost, both in terms of training and in terms of reduced productivity, of switching to a new user interface or in some cases an entirely new usability or human interface paradigm. In many cases, the cost savings of moving to FOSS are massively outweighed by the retraining costs and productivity losses, as Alex from Arts expresses above. These costs are ongoing, as if we sufficiently diverge from the 'industry standard' than all new staff and students will incur this retraining cost. Unfortunately for FOSS, Microsoft (and endnote) are the current norm.

Finally, the University does promote Firefox for home computers and does provide support. Really the IT services are just reflecting what people are using, we are a service, and as a service we are meant to provide for the users what they want. SISO doesn't have Linux SNAP support on the web because it's not very often used (and it's actually very difficult to trouble shoot and is much easier to deal with when brought in to the Student Internet Support Office).

By Danica and Reaps.

Interesting discussion here.

Like Sky, I would be interested to know why "the days of FOSS policies or setting adventurous agendas are for all intents and purposes over for the time being". I would have thought that the change would be inevitable and only grow in momentum. Given all the benefits that come with opensource, all of which the university is supposedly aware of since they are nicely summarised in the university policy.

I would like to clarify a few points of confusion in the discussion. Firstly, the point made by Danica about opensource being tweaked. The implication here is that students and staff will start randomly re-writing bits of the program till they don't work. I think that situation is pretty unrealistic. If someone rewrote part of a program, then maybe, it would be reasonable for tech support to say that they can't help (or maybe tech support should try to help tech issues to the best of their ability anyway).

Further, to the extent that someone would rewrite the code, it is a positive thing. It means that there has been development that increases the functionality of the program. That functionality would likely have use to colleagues doing similar work. But this is not a major issue. Nor one that I can imagine occuring with any frequency. For the vast majority of the universities population, they will simply run the programs.

The question should be: should academics and students have the ability to choose software that they think will best aid their work? And the follow up question: what should tech supports role be?

The assumption underlying a lot of the discussion is that tech supports role is to outline what tools can be used by the rest of the university. These ideas have been clearly expressed by David with the 'unwillingness to support multiple platforms' and being 'permissive' by letting people use macs.

An alternative idea would be that their role should assist people with technical issues.

This was nicely stated by Danica above “we are a service, and as a service we are meant to provide for the users what they want”. Clearly there are members of the community that want to use opensource software. Some of the reasons given (see Sarahs point) is that the opensource software can aid there work. If she thinks that alternative software will aid her work then the university should encourage that.

The second point that has been made is that the university cannot support opensource software for  financial reasons. Now, without doing an elaborate cost benefit analysis we can not be sure. But it does seem like the using free software should lead to cost savings. Further, if there is software available that people think will make them more efficient in their work, then there are further savings to be made there. That is savings on the time of the academics, not just the tech support training time. I would be very skeptical that the cost of training for IT staff could outway the savings made by changing to free software, with any moderate amount of uptake of the opensource equivalents. Think how much money would be saved by a single computing lab using openoffice instead of MS office. And those savings will keep going, everytime that MS puts out a new version that requires everyone in the uni to upgrade (due to them adding an extra x on the filename, or whatever).

The idea that there would be productivity losses from people learning to use new interfaces also seems slightly mislead. It would surely be possible for the university to continue to offer microsoft and linux or endnote and zotero, for those staff who don't want to learn a new interface. But for every person that is able to effectively use the opensource equivalent, the university will save money. And the learning costs are not always high. My mum recently managed to make the switch from windows + ms office to linux + openoffice with about a 10 minute learning curve. Certainly less than other people have had trying to find options in the new ms office menus.

And since we have a capable tech support that are obviously capable of overcoming technical challenges, I'm sure that they would be more than capable of supporting (at least the most common) opensource equivalents.

But these are all technical issues. As Sky pointed out in her opening post, there are many more reasons for using opensource software then just the technical ones. As she said “proprietary software goes against the ideals of academic scholarship (openness, peer review, building a body of public knowledge, etc etc)”.

We should be saying that (to quote David again) “it's not appropriate to spend the University's money [on] infrastructure” for a form of software that goes against the academic ideals.

We are a university. That means the ideals of our institution are about building a public body of knowledge. Software is an increasingly important form of knowledge, and the university should encourage the development and use of its publicly available form.

For this reason especially it should not just be left up to “anyone in IT to champion these decisions”. It should be all of us.

* Debate continues on the use of FOSS at UWA , and I want to do another post to engage with some interesting

I've been using Zotero a lot over the last few months as I tidy up my chapters and start putting together