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
- Business analysts can use the low code / no code features of https://tikitrackers.org/
- Designers can make https://themes.tiki.org/
- Translators: https://tiki.org/Translation-Student-Program
- Sysadmins can set up servers: https://wikisuite.org/Virtualmin
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.