Colleges enrol more open source software

Open source continues to increase its reach into colleges and universities, with three-quarters considering it when shopping for IT.

Research by OSS Watch found that most institutions (69 per cent) have deployed open source on their servers. The most common use is for database servers (62 per cent), web servers (59 per cent) and operating systems (56 per cent).

Use of Moodle, the open source course management system, has also grown to 56 per cent in less than three years.

In contrast to servers, the use of open source on desktops is lower - 47 per cent have used it on desktops. All educational institutions interviewed offer Internet Explorer on desktop PCs and 68 per cent also provide Mozilla Firefox.

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OSS Watch, which is funded by the government's Joint Information Systems Committee, said that while 77 per cent of colleges and universities regularly explore open source options in procurement exercises, only 25 per cent mention open source in their institutional policies, "suggesting an important discrepancy between policy and practice in this area".

Management of open source software remains a challenge too, the report suggests, with only 14 per cent of institutions knowing whether or not they make contributions (by, for example, submitting patches) to the ongoing development of their software.

OSS Watch manager Randy Metcalfe said the survey shows that although open source use is on the rise, institutional engagement with the open source development community remains patchy.