Loading...
 


Start Slideshow Presentation

Why Universities should teach Free / Libre / Open Source software (FLOSS)

Why WikiSuite in particular

Broad feature set

Can cover diverse use cases. It is over USD$50 million of free software! See: https://wikisuite.org/Constructive-Cost-Model-COCOMO

No Plugin Problems

Please see: http://pluginproblems.com/

With plugin-centric systems, if you teach someone today, it's on plugin X, which could be gone in a few years. With Tiki, there is much more stability.

Long Term support

WikiSuite components like Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware have Long Term Support versions which are supported for 5 years. So once you prepare a course, it's valid for a while.
https://tiki.org/Versions

WikiSuite is great for many use cases

  • Students can set up a personal instance to manage their life:
    • personal knowledge bases in their own cloud with life-long learning accessible from anywhere
  • If they go work for a small or medium-sized organization, they can set it up there for a project, and it can grow to help the whole organization
  • If they work in the enterprise, they can set it up for their department

Learning opportunities go way beyond software development

Tiki Trackers

A key component to WikiSuite are https://TikiTrackers.org/ which is a mature and flexible no-code development platform

Employment opportunities

WikiSuite is an established project (started in 2011) built on solid bases (the components are almost all 10+ years older than WikiSuite). While Wikipedia is the broadest unified body of knowledge, WikiSuite is the most comprehensive and integrated Open Source enterprise solution.

  • Deploy projects in the enterprise
  • Start own business
  • Offer web consulting and web hosting (Virtualmin permits to offer shared hosting)

The future

WikiSuite is not as feature-complete as we want it to be. Many more developers are needed to complete the feature set (ex.: with Accounting), improve the feature set, make it evolve, and support a growing community of users.

Widely used technologies

The most used language in WikiSuite is PHP, which all software development students should learn at least at a basic level.

Your University can use for free

Your University, like any organization has many information management needs. Student internships can be set up to address these needs.