September 5, 2003 article by Don Duncan: Failed RMIT software to be 'reimplemented'

[Jon maddog Hall]

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Subject: September 5, 2003 article by Don Duncan: Failed RMIT software to be 'reimplemented'
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Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 09:39:56 -0400
From: Jon maddog Hall <maddog at shamet.sub1.dsl.verizon.net>

Dear Sirs:

A former employee of RMIT, is now a member of my Linux User Group in the state ofNew Hampshire, USA.
He pointed me to the article written on September 5th, 2003 by Don Duncan about the RMIT software that
(at the time of the article, and according to the Auditor-General) cost 47.2 Million ASD, with another
22 Million ASD to follow on and correct the problems, still ending up with a non-tailored, vanilla version
of PeopleSoft, with the University having to restructure itself to fit the way that the software worked.
The article's URL is: http://www.crikey.com.au/whistleblower/2003/09/05-0003.html

I would like to contrast this with a project in South America that I am familiar with called "SAGU".
SAGU is a complete University Administrative system built out of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

SAGU was built in a two-year timeframe by a team of about four programmers.  SAGU keeps track of a student
from the time they take their entrance exams to the time they graduate.  SAGU accepts there registration
information, schedules their classes, schedules the rooms, schedules the professors, handles prerequisites,
keeps track of grades, keeps track of fees, generates reports for the administration, and even keeps track
of library fines (a separate but included part of SAGU called "GNUTECA" runs the library, and PILA runs the
bookstore).  It uses a standard SQL database to hold all of its information (also FOSS) and anyone with a
proper login account and password can access a student's data to find out their status from any web
browser.

This program, developed by the university UNIVATES, is FREE under the GPL license of the Free Software
Foundation.  It has since been expanded by other universities who use it, and translated from its native
Portuguese to Spanish.  The last I knew there was an English port going on.  And all of this software is
still FREE, but the University could pay some Australian FOSS developer to help them tailor the software
to their needs and situation, allowing local people to have a good job, and not have to send all that money
outside of your country.  Or they could do it themselves, because they would have the source code for SAGU.
This might create a good job for some of your better computer science students.

I suggest that if the University is still having problems that they import a couple of the SAGU developers
and pay them five or ten million ASD to implement SAGU at RMIT.  I am sure that in a year RMIT will have
a very fine working system, tailored to their needs at a fraction of the cost of the closed source
proprietary system that they have now.

If you think the University would be interested in this, please feel free to pass on my email address and
information to them.  A small honorarium of one or two million ASD would be acceptable as a finders fee.
It seems that the RMIT management has the money to spare.

Warmest regards,

Jon "maddog" Hall
Linux International
- -- 
Jon "maddog" Hall
Executive Director           Linux(R) International
email: maddog at li.org         80 Amherst St. 
Voice: +1.603.672.4557       Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
WWW: http://www.li.org

Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association

(R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries.
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