Ian Ralph's presentation at the 2010 AIS IT Managers Conference

1. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
The Open Source story at
SCEGGS Darlinghurst
Ian Ralph
IT Manager

2. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
You don’t have to choose.

3. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst

4. ????
2010
SCEGGS Open Source journey for backend services
Mahara, Joomla
Website external
Clustered Services
Moodle CMS
ISOnet
TikiWiki
2000
LDAP for Intranet
AUC CMS
E-mail gateway
Primitive CMS
DNS
Satellite + ISDN
SCEGGS
FOSS @
Darlinghurst
First Web site
1994
Tech plan did not
mention Internet

5. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Free and Open Source Software –
continuum
100% Proprietary Open Source 100%
Desktop OS Backend LMS, CMS,
Services e-Portfolios
Office Suite

6. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Office Suites

7. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Desktop OS

8. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Backend Services
• 7 / 17 servers run
• E-mail
• Websites
• LDAP the glue that binds it all together

9. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
LMS, CMS, e-Portfolios
• LMS – Moodle ( 3 instances)
• CMS – Joomla!
• E-Portfolio – Mahara

10. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Why FOSS?
• It does the job
• We have great support
• It’s cost effective
• It’s reliable and robust
• It’s continually evolving and improving

11. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Support?
• Community
• Contractors
• RTM
• Author

12. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Support Costs
• 2007 - $2280
• 2008 - $1760
• 2009 - $4026
• 2010 - $426

13. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Reliability
• Low vulnerability
• Patches/Fixes often automatic
• Vigilant community
• Last place we look when there are
problems

14. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
The Future
• NOS -> Linux (OES Linux from Novell?)
• Looks bright
• Just Do It!

15. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Questions? Comments Your
Experiences

16. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
The Open Source story at
SCEGGS Darlinghurst
Ian Ralph
IT Manager
1
We’ve had a long journey with open source – since 1996.
Our journey is different from Peter’s and will almost certainly be different from
yours
We started because there were no alternatives – with our first website was
built on a distribution of Linux that I can’t even remember
We have evolved with Open Source
We take the best from both worlds.

17. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
You don’t have to choose.
• Click to add an outline
2
Schools and Open Source are not a case of either or.
It is possible to blend commercial and FOSS
There is a parallel journey in relation to Copyright and material licensed under
CC and other non-commercial licensing systems. Sylvie Saab has already
given a session on Copyright that has explored alternatives to restrictive
copyright – something that could be called open education.

18. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst Click to add title
3
We started out journey with a simple website hosted on a Linux box
Unable to recall the name of the distribution
Here’s what it looked like.
Access was via dialup
It kept crashing and the staff in the boarding house used to walk up to my
office and press the reset button - that boarding house mistress is now our
webmanager!
Yes it crashed but it didn’t matter since it was not a vital part of our schools
infrastructure or services. But that was soon to change.

19. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst Click to add title
SCEGGS Open Source journey for backend services
1994 2000 2010
LDAP for Intranet
Satellite + ISDN
First Web site
Clustered Services
Moodle CMS
DNS
Primitive CMS
E-mail gateway
AUC CMS
TikiWiki
ISOnet
Website external
Mahara, Joomla
????
mention Internet
Tech plan did not
4
A few things about our journey.
Services have evolved – there was no revolution.
Can you believe that we did not mention the work “Internet” once in our 1994 strategic plan –
let along Website or OSS!
We did what made sense at the time taking systems from one iteration to the next, finding
boundaries, overcoming problems, figuring out how to work around limitations
All the time the importance to the good functioning of the school and its services depended
more and more on the systems we provided
This meant that they had to be robust, scalable and reliable. Open source did not let us down
so we have continued on our journey.
There have been a number of FOSS systems that we have trialled and abandoned.
IM system Openfire
Drupal
pHpWebsite
Were out journey goes next is hard to say.
Maybe in 10 years I’ll look back at our NSSCF ICT strategic plan from 2009 and ask the
question how could I have written that with out mentioning ???????

20. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Free and Open Source Software –
continuum
100% Proprietary Open Source 100%
Desktop OS Backend LMS, CMS,
Services e-Portfolios
Office Suite
5
Open source software usage is shown on this continuum. I’d imagine that
each school has some Open Source software and could draw something
similar.
Just as an aside I remember speaking to an IT manager moved to a school
where it was Microsoft end to end and he did say that there appeared to be
fewer “issues”……Maybe I could have made my life easier by moving
everything to the left????

21. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Office Suites
6
Unlike Peter who has had some success with OSS desktops we have not
been able to move from the proprietary end.
Staff and students like to stick to what they know – when people are give a
choice they will tend to stay with the familiar.
Our trial were not successful – after a year we made our lives easier and
jumped back into the Microsoft boat.
That is not to say that we don’t have Open Source application on the desktop ,
but there are not many.

22. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Desktop OS
7

23. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Backend Services
• 7 / 17 servers run
• E-mail
• Websites
• LDAP the glue that binds it all together 8
At the backend things are different.
Our open source servers run on SuSe Linux
They are clustered
Our School admin package runs on Linux
While our website is hosted externally on a Windows platform, our CMS and
LMS all run internally on Linux servers
What would we do without LDAP????

24. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
LMS, CMS, e-Portfolios
• LMS – Moodle ( 3 instances)
• CMS – Joomla!
• E-Portfolio – Mahara
9
No need to say much about these, but I will mention the things I like.
With an active development community, if you ask the question, If only our
LMS could do this?” then there is almost certainly someone who has written
that module.
If you get stuck then the community has almost certainly discussed your
exact same problem and usually there is a solution
If your LMS/CMS/e-Portfolio does not do what you want then get someone to
change it so that it does
They need little support

25. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Why FOSS?
• It does the job
• We have great support
• It’s cost effective
• It’s reliable and robust
• It’s continually evolving and improving
10

26. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Support?
• Community
• Contractors
• RTM
• Author
11

27. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Support Costs
• 2007 - $2280
• 2008 - $1760
• 2009 - $4026
• 2010 - $426
12

28. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Reliability
• Low vulnerability
• Patches/Fixes often automatic
• Vigilant community
• Last place we look when there are
problems
13

29. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
The Future
• NOS -> Linux (OES Linux from Novell?)
• Looks bright
• Just Do It!
14

30. FOSS @
SCEGGS
Darlinghurst
Questions? Comments Your
Experiences
• Click to add an outline 15