OPEN SOURCE IS LIKE solar energy. I'm absolutely, 100 percent in favor of it where and when it's viable. You should be, too. In cases where it isn't a good bet, I swallow my pride, compromise my values, and keep paying my electric bills.

Hear me out. Open source, which refers to free software that can be modified and redistributed at will for the benefit of all users, is virtually irresistible when compared with investing in expensive licenses for proprietary vendor software. Open source has been enormously successful in several areas, including operating systems (Linux) and web servers (Apache). Academia is hotly debating open source for its own community, and several well-documented initiatives are in full swing.

I have drunk the open-source Kool-Aid. That's to say, I have tasted it, and it is most refreshing. I am convinced that academia is in a strong position to build open-source tools ... especially in the areas most closely tied to faculty innovation, such as pedagogy, evaluation, research, collaboration, and the dissemination of ideas, just to name a few.

Certain learning management tools are an obvious example. They are the "crown jewels" for academic institutions, key to competitiveness, ripe for cost containment, and an area where substantial grassroots expertise and innovation are likely.
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Also, learning management innovations tend to attract federal and foundation research investment, which increases the likelihood of inter-institutional cooperation--at least, over the short to medium term.

Although open source is promising, I would warn against too much of a good thing. I suggest a balanced diet, in this case consisting of healthful doses of open-source and vendor-sourced software. The question isn't open source vs. vendor source. We need both. I suggest a "hybrid source" model.

IDEAS INTO REALITY

Open source alone falls short when academia fails, as it does in many cases, to make the sustained long-term investment required to build stable, scalable, robust tools evenly across the entire swath of the academic enterprise.

Academia is unlikely, for example, to lead the charge in integrating academic tools with administrative tools. Although robust databases, effective editors, and strong replication, backup, and other tools are often conceived in the academic world, they are brought to maturity in the private sector.

Unfortunately, open-source initiatives often break down when members of collaborating consortia pull out of an initiative, leaving a smaller number of institutions to carry a bigger slice of the funding pie. And though leading research universities are likely to invest in open-source innovation, they are just as unlikely to sustain those investments as tools stabilize.