Re: [LUG] Plymouth Uni

[MWilliams <MWilliams@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 20/06/2016 13:17, Rod Sheaff wrote:
> Do any of you work at Plymouth Uni, or have recently?
>
> After years of agitating along the 'Why don't you use open source?' line
> I have been invited to discuss this with one of the IT honchos so would
> like to brief myself as well as I can first.

Money and ease. Then support and accountability.

Arguing philosophical positions and backgrounds is entirely valid, but unless someone is will to listen to Linux/FLOSS evangelism, you'll invest a lot of effort and probably not achieve much in my opinion.

I think solutions should be based around need: if a FLOSS solution can solve a need cheaper and more easily than a commercial one, then it's a good contender for implementation.

Whether a solution is implemented depends on the availability and quality of support, and who is accountable when it fails. Having internal support available would be ideal, but knowing there's a support network in case there are problems you can't solve is reassuring. Outsourcing accountability in the case of failure is one motivating factor for some choices, but is less significant than you'd imagine, at least in my experience. There are enough elements of Microsoft networks for which sysadmins are directly accountable, so acceptability responsibility for a non-Microsoft solution shouldn't be too painful.

If it's cheap and comparatively easy, and there's support available, you're good. Active Directory/LDAP integration is always a good start. Reference sites help with convincing people initially though.

The security argument is bogus. Look at Unix penetration in the web, mobile, (W)LAN and security appliance spaces. I'm running virtualised Linux servers alongside Windows and Mac servers, on a Unix hypervisor, behind security appliances and with access points which have incorporated everything from OpenSSL to Apache. Any SMB-sized network is probably already using FLOSS products without even realising.

From experience with the medical school and the university itself, they're currently heavily invested in Windows, Office 365 and Sharepoint.

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