[OSGeo-Discuss] Use cases for FOSS-GIS in universities

[Tim Michelsen]

Hello,
I don't know if this is the right place to discuss this but I just start.

At my university open source is little used in eductaion and research. 
There are only a few single warriors who care about it.

We have serveral departments that use GIS programs. Each of them buys 
normally the licences for Arc*

Most students make their way into one program after attening a number of 
classes on how to push the buttons of that program. But when they come 
back to it after a while all this is lost since they haven't learned the 
logic behind. To my thinking, getting into the many FOSS programs forces 
students to lokk behind and learn concepts rather than functions.

Another thing is the question of resources. Instead of buying licences 
from big companies that money could be saveed to by data loggers, 
equipment or pay a FOSS-developer.

Most projects buy expensive tools when they only want to produce some 
maps to display the survey fields etc.

So, my question is:
* Is there a possibilty set up a university wide infrastructure on FOSS 
that enables whoever neeeds it to handle geodata and analyse it even 
when they are not educated GIS specialists (rather geo/agric scientists)?
	* Naive idea/vision:
		1) computing center of the university employs a GIS specialist(s) who 
act as service force for other disciplines (set up of geodatabases, 
introductory courses)
		2) computing center sets up a server with GRASS, postgis, etc.
		3) those who need geo processing will install a tailored cywin or eny 
other environment to access the latest version of the FOSS GIS software 
on the server via -X forwarding or simply access their data in the 
postgressdb from various clients.
		4) data in the postgressdb could be shared according to given access 
rights
=> there infrastruture is just there, those who need take to whatever 
level they'd need it.

* Question: would it be possible to implement such a scenario?

* Are there already such cases out there?

* Why not take the nice example of the various projects that deliver 
FOSS for schools (Edubuntu, Skolelinux, etc.) and adapt this to the 
world of FOSS4G?
	
* Who or what are the thoughts of OSGEO on this?

Keen to hear your opinion, thoughts, experineces, critics, etc.

Tim