My issue with this is that certain courses that have already had major investments of time and resources to develop, depend on certain features of the wiki and blog tools that are just not available in Niihka. I am all for an open source solution but a solution must be available for these courses in August and if Campus Pack is the one that is available at that time, then it should be utilized until a suitable open source solution is found. (perhaps this is the exceptional type of circumstance you are referring to.) I don't believe it is fair to expect faculty and students to find an alternative outside of Niihka to use until an open source solution is found. 



Janet







-----Original Message-----

From: IT Services Sakai Gov [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce D'Arcus

Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2011 10:11 AM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: addendum to governance policy



Apropos of my comments from a bit ago on use of Campus Pack in Niihka, I'd like to argue we need to include language in our governance policy that strongly discourages these sorts of decisions. I'm not sure what the exact language should be, but for sake of argument, a straw man:



Enhancements to functionality offered in Niihka should be consistent with the open source nature of Sakai. Where we (the governance committee, MU) wish to offer improvements in areas of functionality already offered in Sakai, we should seek to offer those enhancements through contributions to the Sakai community source code. Use of proprietary alternatives to Sakai functionality is not allowed, except under exceptional circumstances.



A statement of this sort certainly has a philosophical basis, but I believe is also eminently practical. If we find the wiki tool in CLE inadequate, for example, then we can work with Marist College to add xwiki support to Sakai, which is not only open source, but superior to the Campus Pack alternative.



Bruce

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Bruce D'Arcus

Associate Professor, Graduate Director

Department of Geography

Miami University

234 Shideler Hall

Oxford, Ohio 45056