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….
I’m saddened to see Technology & Planning disbanded. I greatly enjoyed working for Technology & Planning as a student employee studying Computer Science in Yale College and after I graduated for a year. The community source projects were excellent — CAS, uPortal — in the opportunities they afforded to collaborate with and share with developers at other higher education institutions but most of all it was a pleasure and a privilege to work with Susan Bramhall, Howard Gilbert, Drew Mazurek, and Andy Newman, following in the footsteps of Shawn Bayern. In some ways those were some of the best months of my life.
The lasting good that the Central Authentication Service has done to Yale University and to many institutions of higher education and beyond in easily, effectively securing web applications with support for multi-tier authentication is not to be discounted. In CAS is a perhaps largely accidental investment in technology that has paid deep dividends far and wide.
Thank you for this excellent video.