There is a rather cynical term, derived from Arthur C. Clarke's above statement, and used by software developers to describe the unappreciated effort and technologies it takes to support user requirements: “automagic.” As those in software development can attest, end-users just want it to work and generally do not care about how that's accomplished. Interestingly, one could argue, that the success of open source, as a development method, is due to just this sentiment: If the users don't care about, or even understand, the technologies that deliver functionality, then let's use those that provide us the easiest environment for deployment, open source.
Working in this “just make it work” environment, where more and more folks want more and more things to work, it's understandable that the tenets of Free and Open Source Software would become standard operating practices within IT departments. For example, the ability to run software for any purpose allows the scope of services to expand, unhindered by licensing. This is a great resource as you deploy more instances of Linux through out the data center to support that growing set of departmental systems (Remember the fuel, housing and veterinary management systems?). Additionally, the ability to study how the software works and adapt it to an institution's needs, provides for rapid development and quality assurance. These technical benefits have been the basis for those advocating the use of OSS. However, in my opinion, as long as open source is addressed as a technology issue it will never move into the status of commercial software. Consider a common topic on campuses today, Learning Management Systems. Should faculty be debating.NET, PHP and Java, or, SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle, or, Windows, Linux and Solaris, or, the waterfall method, Spiral techniques and eXtreme Programming, or, Angel, Moodle and Blackboard? That's the goal, a debate over an application's features, not a technology debate.
At a recent technology conference I was working away on my computer at lunch when the fellow next to me asked about my laptop, or more specifically my operating system's desktop. Apparently he had noticed me rolling the 3D desktop, or “cube.” I explained that I was running SUSE Linux and that the 3D effects (Xgl) where all part of the operating system. In fact, this was not the first time someone had noticed and asked about the GUI and I expected this to be the beginning of a nice lunch time discussion (and a welcome distraction from my email). However the conversation faltered as Linux was quickly dismissed as “too complicated for average users,” something only “geeks” could use and support (yes, I guess he called me a geek). I continued on with the demo highlighting more of the graphics tools, searching tools, OpenOffice, the GNU tools like Gimp, etc. I showed him YaST and the Software Updater that installs patches, updates, etc. We talked about distributed networking and managing remote desktops. All of these were features, not technology. He was definitely impressed, SUSE was cool, SUSE was powerful, SUSE offered a lot of functionality and tools, but SUSE was Linux, and Linux was open source. So while it was OK for geeks, it was not very practical for business' every day users, citing the usual technology related concerns about OSS; support (“you can't call the guy in the basement who wrote it when it breaks”), quality (“how good can it be if it's free and built by a guy in a basement?”), security (“if anyone can get into the code, then we could get 'hacked' !”), etc.
I tried to respond by mentioning that not only can support be obtained by Novell, but even Microsoft supports SUSE Linux 1 . I let him know that SUSE would run on his existing Microsoft network. I opened an Microsoft Excel document in OpenOffice Calc. However we quickly devolved into that same old tired debate. Although SUSE Linux provided all of his functional needs and met his usability requirements, we never got past the technical and into the operational.
Based on this I decided to try a little, utterly unscientific, experiment. A little later, when another person asked about my machine - admittedly I was flashing everyone who walked by with spinning desktops, wavy and transparent windows and tiled applications - I informed my subject that he was looking at a pre-release of Windows Vista. Our conversation immediately focused on “Vista's” new features (the same ones I had shown the previous fellow), but this time it was all about usability and functionality. We never discussed how valuable his support from Microsoft was (I wonder how many tickets his institution has opened?), we never discussed how good the actual operating systems was (did it crash, was it buggy?), we never discussed security (perhaps his campus has never been the victim of a virus?) and we never discussed upgrade costs (I assume it was something he just was resigned to absorb). What were apparently barriers to open source adoption, were accepted as the cost of doing business for proprietary software. The lesson here for me was, “why even bring open source up?”
I suspect he knew what personal computing was on his campus, and while he did not know any of the technical issues involved with deploying and administering Vista, he knew the IT staff on his campus would have to make it happen, automagicaly!
If this person happened to be a decision maker on campus, SUSE as a desktop operating system would be dismissed because of open source issues (apples), not issues related to the actual functionality and usability (oranges). I would ask, does your Student Services or the Alumni Office really care if their business systems are running on AIX, Linux, OpenSolaris, Unix or Windows? I would wager no, they really only care that they can enroll students, assess fees and contact students and alumni. So, why then, would the office staff care if they where running SLED, OSX or Vista if all they really want to d o is manage spreadsheets, write emails, store files, print and browse the web? They only would if OSS proponents bring it up. Enterprise level OSS is mature enough that it should be assessed just as commercial software is, based on business needs, functionality, features and usability.
So let's embrace the automagic! Let's let our colleagues live in peace, they don't care about the technology issues low in the software stack (OS, servers, databases), they just want their applications up and running. So they shouldn't care about the technology issues with the applications they can touch (LMS's, SIS's, desktop OS's), they just want their applications up and running. To turn things around, I don't really care if my campus uses Angel, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle, Sakai or nothing! That's the on-line learning folks decision, and my job as CIO should be to make it work. And, I hope the faculty don't care if we run OpenVM, Linux, Apache or MySQL, that's how I'll make their applications work, automagicaly.
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