Pat, you seem to be suggesting a division of labor. The end users should be responsible for knowing, defining, and articulating the functionality requirements, and the IT department is responsible for making them happen automagically, while not confusing the issue with technological concerns about OSS and proprietary software.
This might be fine for decisions made “low on the stack”, but do you think that it is too late for other applications that end users relate more closely to? OSS is a major topic now among end users and academic decision makers. As a CIO how do you handle the end user “in the know” who actively pushes the OSS question because she knows that Moodle or Sakai is OSS and has “technical” questions about the topics you touch on above (code quality, support, etc.) You know, questions like “What do we do if the guy who wrote the software dies?” At what point do you have to engage the end user in “technological” issues about OSS?
Or, perhaps even a tougher question, how do you handle the end user who claims that WebCT is the appropriate solution because the vendor at a conference indicated that WebCT is “Open Source” because at the appropriate purchasing point you can build your own functionality into the application through PowerLinks?
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