About this talk
In this session, Patrick Massen, the executive director of the Apario Foundation, introduces a panel discussing the role of open source software in higher education and how it can foster innovation and community growth. Panelists share their experiences with projects like Zerty and Open Campus, emphasizing the importance of flexibility in educational technology and how open source tools can be tailored to meet unique institutional needs. They highlight stories of how their institutions transitioned to open source solutions for learning management and content authoring, showcasing the benefits of having a responsive community that can adapt to changes quickly. The discussion also touches on sustaining these projects by building strong communities, funding mechanisms, and partnerships within the open source ecosystem, as well as the challenges posed by commercialization and the push for innovation with new technologies like AI.
Full transcript
Yes, thank you very much. Uh, Apario was quite the burden for the eclipse organizers, but thank you for uh all the support and help that you gave us to organize this. Uh, my name is Patrick Massen. I'm the executive director for the Apario Foundation, and Apario is a nonprofit uh open-source software foundation uh focusing on education technology. All of our projects have origins in higher education. They
started as academic initiatives or research projects and for one reason or another um they grew beyond their campus and they joined Apario as a fiscal sponsor. Um so that's what we do and today uh we're going to be talking a little bit about that how projects that emerge or have origins in education um how they can grow not only in terms of technology and community um but
um uh partner with other foundations and companies and uh to grow their projects and grow their communities. So I'm going to let uh everyone Tonko if you want to start introduce themselves and uh then we'll get into a panel discussion. But as we go through if you have questions along the way if you want we'll put the questions up and the topics and the themes. If you
have thoughts questions let's make this a dialogue. Uh we'd be really interested to get your input and um if you have questions for the panelists feel free to raise your hand and I'll run out and uh give you the mic. But Tonko, you want to introduce yourself? Hello, my name is Tom Kotaidon. Um I'm senior educational advisor at Hotel School Dehag. We are very big in name
but a very small university, 2400 students and my main uh interest at hotel school deh is running our LMS learning management system which is run with one of the open source uh projects. It's called Sakai. >> Thank you Tonko. Uh my name is Ina Donkerford. I am u a board member of Operio. I am a PNC um board member of Zerty, an open source uh tool we
talk later more about. And I run uh my own company together with um Tom and others uh in giving support and um hosting for Zerty in the Netherlands and Belgium. Hi, my name is Jan. I'm from Open Campus, an IT company that runs infrastructure management for students and universities. I have been also or I have a long history in academica. So I was 15 years at the
technical university of Munich, made my PhD and so on. And I think I can see both sides. So the academica side and also the side of a company that runs on an open-source framework, Drupal 10. Thank you. Oh, I guess I could have put this picture up at the same time. Um, so if you want to grab their names for LinkedIn or anything like that, there they
are. Um, so a lot of open source software has history um in higher education. Um and I was wondering perhaps you could talk a little bit about what makes uh education, higher education, faculty, researchers a um a incubator for an innov for innovation in open source and the projects and that come out of it. So I don't know Yan you >> maybe I start. So once if
I see this this slide I you you shared it with me in advance and I saw the R symbol and this reflects for me an important thing which reminds me on a story of my university we are because my academica career is in sports and health sciences and we are no statistician we we hate statistics so statistics exams are always the exams that were done the last
that's why we have used I think SPSS for a very long time because it's a little bit more user friendly, the interface is a little bit nicer. But once it comes to corona, we had a major problem. All the students that are on their thesis on their um on their work, they could not access the university because we only has campus license. You have to go on
a lab in the university. So there was a tremendous panic now with the teachers and also with the students. And that is for me a uh such a moment where I say okay we have to we have to rethink our um our policy. We have to go on these open source and also from these open source going to R we changed our schedule how we teach students
now. So we don't teach them in SPSS anymore. We have now changed them the lectures to using simply R as the default. Um and we are now independent on our research tools. >> Yeah, maybe I can also uh tell you a story about Zerty. Zerty is a content authoring tool and I think some some like 20 years ago it started at the University of Nottingham. So that
was really the start of Zerty. There was a guy called Julian Tenny and he um made a s um I don't know in what language it was um the first zerty uh tool in flesh it was he created a tool in flesh uh to ask uh multiple choice questions to his students and um the teacher in the uh room next to him said oh that's handy I
want that too can you create me a quiz as well and so um before he knows he was creating quizzes for everybody in his um department and then he thought oh I can do this better and then zerty was started because he created that in flesh and um and now it's web based it's a big community but it started really small with one good idea of uh
a developer >> yeah um for us um as I mentioned we are very small institution, 2400 students and um what we found in doing research when uh we had to switch to another LMS back in the early 2000s that was um as a um we have quite some different educational logistics, educational processes from the standard higher educational processes and everything we need it. If we want to
get this done with an uh proprietary system, it would be difficult because we only 2400 students. Why would they listen to us? And that is the beauty of open source and also the possibility to uh have higher education as an incubator for open source. Whatever question we had, if it was a valid question, a relevant question, we could have it built for us uh funded by the
by uh the foundation. If not, we could have it funded by ourselves. It's open source and we always did contribute back to the community. So that is the beauty of of um yeah open source by education for education and it really works. It has been working for us since 2008 until now and we're still on the same platform. >> I don't know how many campuses can claim
to be on the same LMS platform for the last 20 years. That's pretty impressive. And I should have offered a prize if anybody can come up after and tell me what all the logos are for. But these are all projects that start on campuses. so I think it's interesting. We had a an origin story that was in a research with R. We had um Zerty as a
teaching and learning tool and then uh Tonko talked a bit about administrative uh needs that drove a selection of an open source tool. So once that project has either been introduced or started on campuses, what do you think um leads to the growth of uh awareness, adoption, community uh contributions? What's unique to campus innovation that helps foster uh the progress of an open source project? >> Yeah.
Um since we are hotel school deh uh we're a hospitality management institution don't know anything about technology but what we do have is uh very wellvoiced student body and faculty body and uh our role in uh this open-source innovation is that we have uh students that can mention specifically what they need and how they uh perceive all the changes that have been made and that is where
uh in Q&A sessions um or quality assurance sessions that's where we can help and at open source conferences where we meet with the developers we can actually voice what our needs are from a faculty perspective and the developers will pick it up straight away and the lines are very short. You never have to go through uh upvoting of whatever you need. You don't have to um bring
it to the enormous public and everyone uh appreciate the change that you suggest so that it ends up on a road map. So that is the beauty and the power that we have as a small institution and we're recognized for it by now. Um I again I go back to Zerty. Uh but I'm also having a company that uh is giving support and hosting for Zerty. But
when we first met with them uh that was the University of Nottingham. I think that's uh 17 or 18 years ago. Uh it was only in English and uh we uh needed a tool an authoring tool that um should be in Dutch also. So then they from the university invited us and others to talk about it and how we can create an international community around the tool
zerty. it by then it was still very small and that was the first time that um the community was starting and growing and uh so it was really uh created at the university but built with a whole community like um commercial uh uh tools like sponsored uh things uh with uh disc tech discs from um the UK. they did a lot of work on um accessibility. So
it grows and it grows and it grows and then all of a sudden it was too big and the responsibilities were too big and they moved from the uh university from Nottingham to the Operio Foundation. So um this is really a nice uh road that they had to yeah go to a adult um open-source tool. Yeah, I think basically the campuses or the universities are the breeding
point of these innovation by themselves. So um when I was still at the university, open campus came to our department to implement the research software because research basically very often is just simply handled in Excel sheets that are shared through maybe now via via Google or whatever. Maybe if you are have some GDPR uh compliances you share it on a local server or whatever. But this was
the idea where we developed basically I developed from the side of the university a tool that can manage just simple data for for for users in a cloud where everyone can access for sure anonymized via ID numbers. And in the evaluation of this project we decided oh we we need exports and then you take Drupal and you initialize these module without any development. You bring other users
from different universities into your system and I think simply this product grow by themselves at the >> So that's that's a thank you. That's a good segue into the next question. So, sustainability is a big uh question for a lot of projects. Um, and that could be community sustainability, financial sustainability, uh, project sustainability. Um but looking at the community, um what might be different for projects that
have origins and serve higher education or education technology than other projects that maybe are commercial to from the start or support sort of deep in the infrastructure that most organizations or most users don't even know about or even government. What is it about the community in higher education that's unique for sustainability and how are you leveraging that community to keep your projects and your um organizations going?
I think community is very important because I've also seen many PhD projects which mainly is the first sketch of a maybe of an open source product or whatever. you write code or you write apps or whatever and once this PhD is finished the project is finished because it's not taken into any further consideration. We have had projects with the federal departments of Bavaria also with national funding
institutions where you think they should have a higher interest. What we have done developing an app for for kids with chronic disease or whatever but simply at the end you write your final report you submit the code that's it never heard anything. And if you are not or if not a community or any at least individual persons help you to bring it to a broader audience. Unfortunately,
I think many projects really good projects are simply dead after the university career. Funding runs out, people go to to a company to work and those projects Yeah. are done. So maybe I can just follow up on that. How what would be some advice or insights on addressing that? Do you have any thoughts on overcoming that graduation impass? I mean basically you need a network. You need
maybe um foundations like Apario that where you can relate to it and they can serve as a kind of a multiplicator for you or at least give you connections, governance or whatever to pursue your idea because I know the crucial part usually in Germany you get three years of funding and that's it and then you are done and then you can maybe pursue an ideal realistic vision
of your product or you simply can decide oh sorry I have to earn money and this project was my PhD okay but that's it and if you don't have the resources the networks and yeah then you I think are done with your project >> yes so I think totally true I think also that you need um to think uh with your students about What's after the 3
years? So you built that in already. Um how what if it's a success? What what if others can use it? How are we going to uh go on with with that project? Um about the community as an engine of it's hard work because the community doesn't always do uh okay um oh we like this, let's let's do it. Um as um the core members of the 30
team we have to do a lot of work to get them uh involved to do um deliver new things so they are excited make small groups for um documentation for technical things um so it's not growing by itself uh we wish but uh that's yeah mostly it's not so important u to get your community with >> Yeah. Um community um it's on on on many different levels
and many different perspectives. The community, the community is on the creation side, on the development side, but the community is also on the funding side. The community is also on the usage side. uh on the providing feedback on usage side and um that community building um a foundation like Apirio uh what happens is we are not technical university but we specifically chose to become a paying member
of the foundation as hotel school so that what we can't do the community can provide for and a lot of tools within um the project they got uh adopted by the university that either originally created them or they've taken over or it has been taken over by a commercial partner that keeps up the tool to the current standards. And that is also one of the very important
sides of the community is providing stability and governance over whatever you find within the code within whatever you find within the program that it does look and feel a big program and does not look like uh many different parts stitched together and I think that is uh where the community is also tremendously important. to safeguard the sustainability and yeah hence again as Patrick mentioned uh for the
past 20 years we've been on the same platform so talking about sustainability I guess it's there >> uh some small um things to add um we are all members of the Imperial Foundation and the Amperior Foundation is really um doing a lot a good job on working with the communities uh for that sustainability. So they gave us um uh ideas uh work with us have a lot
of uh micro conferences um about growing your community working with your community. So for for us as a as a project it's really important that we are part of that appial community where we can talk to other tools and uh other uh parties. uh how do you do that and what can we do? We have this problem. How can we solve it? >> Thank you. And again
if Oh yes. >> Yeah. I think personally I think I agree with Visan though I think it's not just the students. I think it's also a problem on how the success is being evaluated in academia at large because a lot of that it ends with like what publications you have. So for a lot of research unless there is a commercial partner in the middle in the loop
you just end up with publishing papers and you get success based on the level or where the papers were published but there is no push actually to to use it in practice and we see that especially with with unit time as with the timetabling there has been a lot of timetabling research it's a lot of just departmental problems that have been simplified it's it's never it's that
step to actually start using it that's that's very part and yeah it's yeah you have to write documentation you actually care about all the edge cases and and all the other stuff you know not just the the interesting part >> response anyone >> I basically agree this publishing thing is a big issue because you're only I think also in Germany it is like this that you evaluated
then on your publication record on maybe also how many funding money you have received it's not about giving good lectures, good education which is part of the cycle from my opinion. Um let's see maybe at least in Germany we know that something from this perspective is changing and also the lecturing part how you how you teach your students is more and more important instead simply having good
publication record. >> maybe I can contribute on that because I was uh part of academia and then now I'm in open source and I'm actually going around try to teach in academia how to do open source because what we are discussing is exactly that you know if you want a community or if you want to pursue open sources as you said it's not just today I do
my thesis is uh it's something that it's a kind of education that you need to have about how you code how you make documentation and about that I don't have an answer for your question uh we start for uh on my side we start uh uh you know from the bachelor we go there and we try with some professors to have some credits when you start contributing.
I'm going there. I'm explaining how to contribute and they have this, you know, the start for making them see the world not alone. Okay. But in a community so they can they can start doing that. On the other side, I saw also that as you were saying, if there is no profit, it's difficult because you need job, you need money and you need you need to sustain
yourself and what I observed at least in Italian university is that for achieving this purpose I'm not not saying that is the solution but they start a startups that can be followed by the students in case they want to pursue and then they try to you know the purpose of having a target and maybe you know adopt other students for the sameis and gone but I don't
know if it is you know I don't see any successful startup on this so I'm not saying is a is a solution but we can think of other solution and I just want to say that I'm not stating anything or questioning anything just giving this >> I mean quickly on the bigger institutions for sure you have incubators in the university by themsel I mean I'm talking about
technical university of Munich 20,000 students but on smaller universities those people then at the end are kind of lost because infrastructure is not there for them and I think we've moved into the next topic so in the examples we've got graduate students who the project fades away. But is there a is there a mechanism to allow the core research that maybe one grad student did to take
that software that was developed and it's applicable to the discipline now um and it grows that way? Or we had the example of um one professor using a tool and the professor next door looks in the classroom and sees it and it sort of grows organically that way. We have one small institution adopting a tool. Um but how does the next institution know about it? And not
just from in internally uh within higher education academia but what about um engaging with companies or forming companies, startups um um so how can projects bridge that gap between a academic focused uh project that's developed by folks within higher education or um staff, faculty, whoever it might be. How do what are some advice on on maybe doing a startup, maybe partnerships, maybe you know getting the word
out, growing outside of higher education or academia? Um I think that is where uh foundations, open source foundations in general such as Appirio are so crucial to make that happen because um the smaller the the startups or the smaller institutions where things start to grow, the seeds start to grow, they can never make this happen by themselves. That is where you do need the support, the guidance,
the funding, the the the the guiding principles of a foundation like Emperia u or any other open-source foundation. But that is where uh yeah bridging academia and the market it is actually all about creating the community and growing the community around it. That is the basis for the growth. >> Yeah. I'm curious what you think. So after me you can answer. Um uh this is a bit
the way we work and we have zerty as an open source uh tool community and we are hosting giving hosting and support but still then we have a lot of trouble to convince um bigger parties um ministries um to use open source. Um we noticed that and it's getting better but we noticed before that they rather take uh some commercial tool and um because they think um
then it's okay and oh don't do open source that uh the code's not good it's unsafe. It's getting better but that's also a bridge we have to um to to get to go to the market. So in in in a smaller scale it works fine now but we are now trying to get it um in a bigger scale and stay also open source because what uh often
happens is it's get big getting bigger and bigger and then it's getting commercial and then all of a sudden an open source tool isn't open source anymore. So um what we do with Apirio is try to uh stay um open source because we said okay we are an open source tool and we will stay open source. So but I was uh curious. >> Well I'm I'm actually
going to follow up and with Yan as well because you both are working for companies that chose a product as a project to create a business around. So I'm very curious what was the when you were looking at zerty and when you were looking at open campus what was the business case the value proposition that said okay this is a open source project this is an open
source community that we believe in what like what were the what's the evidence for that that you used in your head that here's the opportunity and then how did you define your business to remain authentically open source um and engaged with the open source community but still have to commercialize it, grow the company and at the same time grow the project. So maybe talk about the business
case behind this. I mean basic basically in campus management software there are not so many competitors there is his and SAP but they are old they are unflexible and what we experienced in the very beginning that even if you think you have bachelor master which are um clear curricular universities have to be flexible because they are different they are different and we have to we have to
adjust our systems to the specific university needs and I can't see any other products and open source that f fulfill these needs to be yeah adjustable in a specific time because it's always urgent and in general it's not the case that the customer will change the process. customers stick to the process very often. I mean you can convince them in some point but uh usually they say
no in our institution it's like this we like your product but in our case it's a little bit different and if you can't adjust this then you have a you don't have a point there. Yeah, for us it was a bit accidentally. We were working on um commercial learning management platform and we needed um an authoring tool uh in uh in that uh learning platform. Uh so
we looked around and we found um Zerty. uh then we get uh connected to the the small growing community and then we were um yeah hooked on open source. Uh we love the way um it's open uh you can share if we create something some someone else can also use it learning materials can be shared and reuse and so now in our company uh our rule is
um open source unless there's nothing for that part um and our our business model because we have to eat we are with 15 people we we need all um some uh dinner. Um so the business model around that was uh giving hosting and support and um organizations are willing to pay for that because they don't want to do it themselves. So we ask a bit more and
with that bit more we can develop the tool further. So that's good for the community and so you get a sort of an ecosystem that that's yeah sustainable for the future. >> Yeah, that was exactly the same for us. all the money uh we have gone through uh either multi-private tenders or European tenders. Um but the question is what do we ask in the tender? Do we
ask in the tender hosting and support of our freeof charge and then put a lot of money from the tender into further development in the tools specifically to our needs or the process molded around the processes that we will not change because we are we. So um it's a complete gamecher for us. um all the money we put into a small amount of hosting and support 24/7
etc. But the majority of the money is actually going into further development of tools towards our needs versus I'm paying a big company just to throw it into the air and do nothing for us specifically only generic questions that will fulfill the entire body of needs in So yeah, that's when I when and how I fell in love with open source many years ago. >> Thanks. Um,
so looking back when the projects first started when you or maybe when you all first got involved with uh an open source project, if you had to give advice to a peer, faculty member, staff member um or a department or university, what's the one core piece of advice that you would give um to ensure not just sustainability for the project but continued engagement with the institution because
that's an important connection right the two of them have to work together to further both their interests contributing to the project and making sure those contributions serve higher education so what's the one you had to give that core critical piece of advice what would it be um for me the core critical piece of advice was engaging with the community um when there were still the live conferences
around the Sakai. Uh we had Sakai conferences back then. Um it was five minutes on the pre-conference day with the developers sitting at the same table at the same in the same bar that brought forward a lot of my thoughts and suggestions that immediately got translated into deliverables and that was before the conference started. So key takeaway is engage with the community that you're going to partner
with or make use of. >> Yeah, sustainability and uh your community is very important. That's also the one thing I would say. But another thing I was in a very good session yesterday with you I think about um monetize your open source project. Um I advise everybody that has an open source project to uh see the video because really really interesting. uh what the advice that I
would give is keep keep on track what's happening. For example, there are open source projects at the moment that um uh we have AI. If you're not on that train um you're gone in a few years. So, it's not only um looking at what you have and how you can keep it, but also what's coming ahead and um react to that. Yeah, Tonko, you mentioned listen to
the community. I would rephrase it a little bit. Listen to your customers. If you build a product that only helps 50 people of your academic staff, but not the 10,000 students that are also using it, then the project will fail. So we have we have also witnessed this projects that uh were driven by two or three people making their work easier instead of making the work of
another also users easier and that's the critical part because then the people will refuse to use it at least the 500 maybe not the three but the 500. >> I'm going to jump ahead. Um so looking forward you brought up a little bit about AI and the future. Looking forward what are some of those future considerations? I mean open source has sort of become like um a
utility like water and power. It's just standard infrastructure now. Um then there's the concerns of the classic you know you can't go to a conference without seeing the the cartoon. Um is AI going to take over? um is uh open source going to be taken over by companies and are they the ones that are controlling the development? Um those are all sort of gloom and doom, but
where do you see the future of open source uh specifically in higher education? I think you've all touched on one of the reason open source um is successful in higher education and emerges from higher education is because the institutions have unique environments that almost require the ability to customize and adapt and to align with the institutional vision and direction. But moving forward um what do you think
are the critical issues um or the uh what's coming up? Um what should folks be thinking about when they think of open source in the future? I mean AI will definitely a big cornerstone in the further development of open source. When it comes to AI, I always I always think the community perspective because what what I see right now and also what changed during corona times people
go into the home office co people now use claw co-work or code or whatever. People are not talking to each other. People are talking to AI the system and I think that is a definitely a critical point where where people not not talking to each other anymore and I think if we can't solve this problem we are just in our rabbit hole where we get fostered by
our own ideas and this will not shape our mind in the future and I think this is the community is the benefit of open source and I still hope that the community is will be will stay as they are that they are vital that they are interactive and especially in higher education I see unfortunately tenurs are very often short-term in university so you move around through Europe
through Germany or you're also uh in the states or whatever and you connect with people and you keep this community vital this is my big hope >> Yes. For us AI is something also for the future. Um but um I was wondering when I think about this um we have a big fight to do with the big tech. Um all open source communities um at some point
have um a fight about that. I think it's really important that we come together in conferences like this um with all the different communities and have and and do it together. uh we have all a small part of a a large ecosystem of open source tools and let's make that fist if you can say that together um with uh organizations like Aberio Eclipse um and that that's
very important and I think we should do that uh more and more >> okay I will stay away from the two dreaded letters although I intend attempted. Yes, there is a future perspective. Um I think what is uh also ultimately important as Ingis stated um opensource unless it's not possible and you need some other tools. I think that is also where the open source communities need to
reach out and shake hands with commercial parties to make them think more opensource like and at least a a standard hook to open source so that if you need to marry a hybrid system of opensource and propri proprietary that it will be built the proprietary site by definition to be able to hook up to open source and the other way around because then you can also keep
working into the future. New things might emerge not on the open source side but on the proprietary side so that you can still marry everything together and it's beneficial to both parties. So >> So you're the diplomat and I'm the fighter. So, uh, we have, uh, 3 minutes and 12 seconds. So, if anyone has questions or comments, thank you very much. Um, I just like to contribute.
Um, in was it January I was at the Aperio found uh, foundation micro conference. Was it January? Yeah. So, I'd like to contribute as regards bridging the gap between academia and um marketplace that was actually what my topic was about. So basically uh while I was still at the American University what I did as a coordinator of the uh computer science department usually students during their final
year project they built software at some point I stopped them from doing generic and basic hospital management systems and all that. So what we did was that they needed to connect to the industry. So either they go to their offices or they go Yeah. So it has to be linked to the industry. So I told them either your project should be innovative or impactful. Innovative being that
it's new maybe never seen or whatever or impactful. You're trying to solve a problem for a particular maybe hospital or whatever and that actually worked a lot. So I think this is actually a way to to also bridge that gap you know connecting directly to them especially with the final year students you know make them build software so they adopt it at the end of the day
and it worked well for us. Thank you. >> Thank you. other question. >> Okay. So I think uh I thank you all and uh we will go to the next
