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

[Arnulf Christl]

[...]
> Although my University has a large Unix system also and while it runs
> many debian-based systems, my experience is that it is even more
> difficult to set up a free GIS environment (the Geoinformatica for
> example) there - so in fact the Windows solution is not so bad after
> all. And as students usually have Windows machines at home, at least
> some students have been succesful in downloading the system , installing
> it, and using it. We have some aspirations for remote education too and
> in such a setting a freely downloadable system is indispensable.
>
> Ari

Hi,
speaking as a company I must say that we are very put off because of
missing interest from universities. We have been offering to install and
maintain servers for free to several universities and there is always a
load of initial interest and then frustratingly nothing happens with it.

The strategy that we follow is straight forward and mutually benefitial.

We have quite a loadful of students in a queue waiting to do an internship
at our company because they know that they can learn things there that
they wont get university. Once they leave our place (obviously depending
on what their capabilities were in the first place) we regularly turn out
people who can manage the full FOSS stack. They sometimes apply for jobs
at unviersity and we happily recommend them. Once they have the job they
install the FOSS stak and put it into operation and thats it. Nobody will
use it except a few of the more interested students who then regularly end
up on our doorstep. After some time it is more important to install that
versoin of XRI or this version of grinterarph to run a course that is
already there.

Ther is absoultely no support or even requests from professors. I guess
this has to do with several reasons, one is not knowing how to do it
themselves, another is lack of time (turning universities into businesses
breaks people having time for this kind of thing), course material from
last millenium, etc.

It is not that I want to flame universities at large and especially not
those who read this mailing list because they seem to have taken a few
first step already - but I fear that we as commercial service providers
have already done what is in our power to get going. Now it requires the
universities to take up the thread but you know, it is so much easier to
follow the old paths and take whats there and it does not cost anthing and
therefore there is no difference to FOSS anyway - Aaaargh!. Heyho, calm
down, you did not want to start a flame... :-)

Best regards, Arnulf.

PS:
This reminds me strongly of the discussion of the university workgroup at
the OGC meeting in Ottawa. They (OGC) have the same issue that nobody from
university really cares for them. But they have the additional problem of
proprietary commercial providers not really wanting to make people learn
GIS but only have them learn their software! So here is a big conflict
that universities should consider and which does not apply when using
FOSS! Hmmm. This is interesting. Not good for a post scriptum but my time
is up and I will be off for a few days. Maybe somebody picks this up and
adds it to http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Advocacy or any of the pages
linked from there. This hint is well hidden.