Reports

The UOC community backs free software. From the members of the governing body, the professors and management staff, down to the students, everyone will start this academic year using terminology such as open source or GNU/Linux in their day-to-day tasks. Alternatives beyond the proprietary software from the big companies are now becoming available.

"Free software is being backed by the institution, but also in response to the demands of the community. We are at a point where access to the UOC and the work produced by our students has to be multi-channel, mobile? We cannot allow any given operating system or specific tools to set the limits to the work we carry out", stated Llorenç Valverde, the UOC's vice-rector for Technology.

In line with this idea, this semester is to see some five thousand UOC computer engineering students take part in the pilot project for an educational platform based on free software. The students will receive three CDs, two of which will allow them to connect to the Virtual Campus and work in the free software environment, if they wish. As Valverde explains "members of the community will be able to choose", as " free software allows us to ensure that our students, professors and the whole university community can freely choose the platform they wish to work on".

The first of the CDs they are to receive is a LiveCD, personalised for each of the UOC's students, containing an up-to-date and customised distribution of GNU/Linux. According to Josep Prieto, director of the Systems Computing programme, "a LiveCD is an operating system and a series of applications, in this case based on GNU/Linux, which are stored on a CD and which provide a complete platform that can be started up straight from the CD, without having to install any other program on the hard drive". A distribution of GNU/Linux, or distro, is a series of applications that aids installation of a Linux system and the associated tools, such as office applications, browsers, email clients or other more specific kinds of software.

The second CD provides free software tools for a Microsoft Windows-based environment and the third, complementary CD, provides free non-open source software, such as trial programs.

The aim of this pilot test is to offer students the chance to choose which platform they want to access the UOC from and to let them work on and get to know some of the advantages of free software.

Highlights among these advantages include the cost reduction and the ease with which they can be freely and constantly updated over the internet. Valverde explains that "right now, guarantees can be offered to ensure that everyone works in equal conditions, that they are not limited by economic factors or to a certain type of tools; and this is possible thanks to free software".

As Prieto explains, "after collecting and analysing the results of the pilot project, in September 2007, all the students on the UOC's official courses will be able to choose whether they want to use a educational platform based on free software".

As well as this pilot test, the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) is also working on the creation of a free software Virtual Campus, a project in which the majority of the other Catalan universities are also involved. "Thus, the project also encourages the spirit of collaboration and networking inherent in today's society", explains the vice-rector.

Llorenç Valverde concludes that "one of our objectives is to extend the range of services offered by the UOC, making the most of the technological possibilities we have available; and always bearing in mind that the fundamental nucleus to our work is that which takes place in the classroom, ie, teaching".

Management staff platform

In September it will not only be the students who can choose one kind of software or another to work with. Gerard Delmàs, a student and member of the UOC's Technological Infrastructures department, is developing a project to produce a platform based on free software (FS) for management staff. Delmàs explains that "99% of desktop software is owned by the UOC; the possibility of offering a platform based on FS will allow employees to choose between proprietary or open-source software, which will bring us into closer touch with society in general". The aim of this project is "to create a model based on FS that allows UOC employees to carry out the most important parts of their day-to-day tasks". It has to be stressed, however, that at no time is he looking to replace the current Windows platform, but simply to offer an alternative. For Delmàs, the key to success when it comes to using FS, with the minimum of upset, is its being able to work harmoniously with proprietary solutions.

The project consists of the study of which tools are currently used as the point of reference, finding their FS alternatives and integrating these into the organisation's current infrastructure. FS is to cover 100% of the needs of 80% of the users or 80% of all of the computing needs, in order to avoid any kind of problems. If we add to this the obvious cost savings for a company, the idea seems a sure-fire winner. Gerard Delmàs explains that "the following factors have to be taken into account: we are dealing with users who have voluntarily chosen to work with this platform; the profile of a university employee has certain skills and relatively well developed abilities in terms of technology, and in other experiences in different companies the change has proved to be positive". In order to aid this change, employees are to be offered specific voluntary courses on the different tools used in free software. As an alternative, they will also be provided with manuals and learning programs that can be downloaded from several of these projects' web pages.