I wasn't really trying to be enigmatic about my position - I said I was on a committee that had influence. As others have pointed out, faculty are often the ones who are the hardest to convince to change software, so an initiative coming from the faculty is a good place to start. Also, IT are supposed to be in a support role, not pushing an agenda. At least, so our committee thinks. As for actually making decisions, no, of course not. We make recommendations and it is up to the administration to act on those recommendations. After all the feedback, I've definitely scaled back my vision of an all FOSS university. At this point I think just making people aware of options would be a good thing. And I certainly wouldn't be telling IT how to do their job. Before we do anything we'll talk to IT and see what they think. I know a bunch of people in IT and I'm pretty sure they would be in favor of options for people, but not all of them will be. So, we'll have to negotiate. Such is life.

I remembered one from Canonical, but here's a regularly updated one: http://www.theopendisc.com/

Hi Harmony... I've made a note of your email. This is all very preliminary and, not surprisingly/surprisingly, Slashdot has been very useful in thinking through the issues on this. Your thoughts, in particular, are very helpful. I'm meeting again with my committee Wednesday morning when I'll go over a lot of these ideas and give them some feedback. I'm also an adviser for some student groups and I may suggest the FOSS CD/DVD idea to them and see if they are interested. Another person also suggested getting the student paper to cover anything we do. All great ideas. The one I'm most interested in now that I hadn't given much thought to before is Moodle. It sounds like that could be a major improvement and money saver. If I get any positive feedback on that, I'll definitely be in touch. It's used heavily by some people at my university, which makes me think that they may not want to move away from it. But what's the harm in getting some allies in this fight and floating the idea around? Thanks again!

I like the idea of making CD/DVD copies of this software available. Right now I do push both Zotero and OpenOffice.org on my syllabi. I talk about which document formats I will accept; .odt is the first one I mention, then I explain that OpenOffice.org is free. I also have my students do assignments where they need to gather a list of references; I teach them how to use Zotero to do that. Your other ideas are good ones. I'll see about switching over a lab.

Nice comment. I'm thinking a FOSS user group would be another great place to start. Thanks!

I think I'll do this. This makes sense. Cheap, easy, and it will get the students familiar with FOSS.

Good thought on the Purchasing Office. I know a number of people in IT, but not the head of IT, and he is the one I'm worried won't want to share his numbers. I was thinking of ways to get around him, but hadn't thought of the Purchasing Office.

Good insights. This was very useful! Thank you.

Good point. Before I do anything else I should see what people use and whether they can switch given their needs.

I'm a faculty member on a committee with the responsibility for looking into things like this. I didn't say in the original post that I could change things, only that I'm in a position to influence future purchasing decisions. Of course, I may find out that what my committee is being charged with accomplishing will run into a brickwall and the claim that we have "influence" may turn out to be so much hot air. But I figure I can up my odds of having influence if I have good arguments from the get go. From the previous comments it sounds like starting small, with very minor battles makes sense. As for specific pieces of software... The first one would be Endnote to Zotero. We could save thousands on that one transition alone and educate a lot of faculty who do bibliographies by hand along the way. Another one would be MS Office, but I'm not sure that one will fly. I can't even convince my wife to make the switch to OpenOffice (she's also faculty); not sure I can convince the rest of the faculty. I need better arguments. An earlier comment noted how invested faculty are with Blackboard. I think we could save hundreds of thousands by switching to Moodle, but I'm not sure if even the faculty on my committee would support that move. So, baby step suggestions?

I don't know yet... But I am in a position to find out. What I want to know, however, is whether or not it makes sense to fight the fight. How much could the university save based on other case studies. The very first comment showed that open source cost more than the proprietary software in the long run. That's what I was looking for. Also, some of the comments about "sunken costs" of faculty into Blackboard are making me think this may not be a battle worth fighting when it comes to faculty.