A low-quality version of the documentary can be found here (long load time).
Our documentary sought to explore both the contributions Yale has made to various open source projects as well as how Yale employs the results of open- and community-sourced projects. We did so primarily by looking at CAS (Central Authentication Service), uPortal, Sakai, and Horde, all projects which have been partially developed or used by the Yale community.
With four interviews (three video and one audio), we explored open source’s impact at Yale, talking to Andy Newman (outgoing Director of Yale University ITS Technology and Planning), Paul Hudak (a principal developer of the community-created language Haskell), Shawn Bayern (a principal developer of CAS and professor of law at Duke), and Susan Bramhall (a Senior Research Programmer for Technology and Planning and a board member of JA-SIG, a community-source educational software organization).
This project was incredibly timely, as the Technology and Planning Department, the arm of ITS responsible for Yale’s open source development and contributions, was very recently disbanded as part of recession streamlining, and so this documentary examines the projected future impacts of Yale withdrawing somewhat from the open source community.
Enjoy the documentary, thanks for a great class, and have a good summer!
Robert Baskin, Patrick Dewechter, Matthew Du Pont, Lauren Henry
This was really well done! I found it very interesting that Yale’s open source developments first emerged out of necessity when there were not even off-the-shelf operating system available to run on the university’s equipment. Perhaps the thriving industry of higher education software has made it easier for Yale to justify its disengagement from open source projects. From your documentary, it’s pretty clear that this is a poor decision, seeing as Yale and its peer schools truly reap major benefits from being able to collaborate on things like CAS and SAKAI that are made by universities for universities with the programmers (who can make modifications relatively easily when need be) working in-house. I really hope Yale will see the light!
How sad…Technology and Planning’s done a lot, it’s a shame they’re being disbanded….