In our recent open source quick survey we asked respondents what they would most like to learn about open source. The answers were clustered around the basics such as what is available, what stage of deployment, case studies, and, what does it really cost to implement open source solutions (see http://www.a-hec.org/research/surveys/osqp0505.html)? The previously cited compendium by David A. Wheeler [1], has a detailed section on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). For the non-higher education products previously discussed, there are studies that show TCO reductions in the 20-30% range compared to Microsoft’s solution. In addition, there are claims that the open source products are substantially more reliable and substantially less vulnerable to security breaches.

For the higher education applications, more research and case studies are required. This is because the analysis is complicated by the variability across institutions in terms of what resources may exist. For instance, if a software development (programming) staff exists at the institution, then the TCO is much lower than if these resources need to be hired. Further, the adoption of the previously discussed community source model requires ongoing fees for membership that, while probably lower than the annual cost for proprietary software, narrow any savings gap. Software product pricing may also be discounted in education.

Stay tuned for more case studies on this issue. For now, it is probably true that if an institution has staff and other resources in place for development of a custom solution to an application (like the CMSs at the core Sakai institutions), it is probably a no-brainer economically to go the open source route. Another scenario that could be a no-brainer is the situation where the institution desires major customization, which just isn’t available in the proprietary products. At this point, the lack of easy-to-implement packaging of the higher education open source initiative products means that many institutions that are interested will need to employ service firms, adding to the cost.