On Friday March 13, 2009 openSIS was proud to announce another milestone
towards that future of the Education_ERP.
We have released an ALPHA of openSIS on MySQL . Try it, Debug it, Talk
About it, Help develop it. PLEASE
https://eduforge.org/projects/opensismysql/

We at the openSUSE Education project are dedicated to helping schools and school district’s make the transition towards the low cost open source alternatives that are already mainstream in there production versions.  Along with providing openSIS, a product directly sponsored by us here at OS4ED, the project brings with it prepackaged and tested versions of server applications key to the implementation and operation of a modern technology based curriculum. (http://en.opensuse.org/Education/Applications/Server) Any school district or private school that employed these solutions could realize a savings of over 50$ per year in licensing and support costs per student and more if they are used to replace commercial versions that require licensing per teacher as well. Combined with the enhanced educational opportunities acquired by moving into the culture of sharing teacher tools and the savings are  immeasurable.
The server applications mentioned at the link above are 8 of the top ten things we provide, the numbers one and two items would be:

1) the incredible software that comes with Novell’s openSUSE and the community of supporters dedicated to it.

2) the worldwide dedication to education software is maintained in the over 100 other titles in our desktop repository.

openSIS, for me, is the flagship product that we offer in the openSUSE repository because it means so much to the budgets and equality of data management  that it brings to the schools of the world. Consider this:

Private schools essentially have no real operating budgets and as a result, most cannot afford a commercial SIS.  But they can afford low cost hosting and support if the SIS is free.  Here is an example for a 1,000 student private school buying Pearson’s PowerSchool product:

Powerschool License - $28 per student x 1,000 students = $28,000
PowerSchool annual maintenance and support - $8 x 1,000 = $8,000
Powerschool Server - Dual processor vanilla Dell server = $5000
Dell Extended 3 year support - $250
Windows Server License - $1,000 ( I am guessing very low)
Windows SQL Server License - $1,650
Client access licenses required to connect to Windows Server and SQL Server - $50 per workstation x 25 workstations = $1,250
Implementation assistance and training - 10 hours at $250 per hour = $2,500

Total for Year 1 = $47,600
Ongoing Costs = $8,000
Years 4 and beyond - MSFT costs to renew licenses or upgrade to new versions.
Hardware costs associated with the new software version requisites.

Now consider our scenario:

openSIS License - $0
openSIS Support and Maintenance - $6 per student x 1,000 = $6,000
openSIS Hosting - $150 per month x 12 = $1,800
Sever Cost = $0
Sever Maintenance - $0
Client Access Licenses - $0
Server Licenses - $0
Implementation assistance and training - 10 hours at $75 per hour = $750

Total for Year 1 = $8,550 (Year 1 difference of -$39,100)
Ongoing Costs - $7,800  (Ongoing Costs difference of -$200 per year)
They never have to renew/upgrade MSFT licenses
Hardware upgrades planned as needed to support serviceable lifespans

The private school market has over 7 million students in it and it is growing at about a 5% pace every year.  The OS4Ed goal is to build an open source stack that we continue to bolt pieces onto for $1 or $2 per student:

openSIS - $6
openIntel - $2
openBiblio - $2
Moodle - $2
And more as we grow……Until we can provide the http://en.opensuse.org/Education_ERP as a complete package.

James Tremblay
openSIS Product Support Specialist
openSUSE for Education Founder

My name is James Tremblay,

For 8 years, I was the Director of Technology in a small Southern NH school district. During that time I struggled with the budget process and learned to compete with the other department heads for the small annual increases we asked the town for. As I began to learn of Linux from one of my peers in a neighboring town, I began to realize that there was no real centralization of the offerings to Education made by the “Free and Open” community. Since I was a 15 year veteran CNE (Certified Novell Engineer) and Novell had at that time just purchased SuSE linux, a German company, I began to lobby them to support the cause. Soon after , I was awarded the privilege of managing the openSUSE for Education project http://en.opensuse.org/Education . As I began to write out those thoughts, I realized that the most expensive item in my budget was the SIS (student information system), on average these cost a school district 25-30 Dollars per student just for the initial licensing and then 6-18 Dollars per student in support, excluding localization items like report card layout or customized state and local reports or assessment queries. This made me think, is there a better solution? Could I get someone to write an open source alternative. I then added the page http:///en.opensuse.org/Education_ERP to the work I had done so far with openSUSE. This lead me to the team that was producing the original source code for openSIS and it’s founders. Today, I am writing this as the newest member of that team and its first full time support engineer. I am here to answer your questions and maybe pose a few of my own. I am proud to serve the children and the Educators that bring them the light of  knowledge.  I hope we become great friends and colleagues.

As one of my first official acts , I have opened the code to community development at https://eduforge.org/projects/opensis/   and started an subversion repository at https://eduforge.org/plugins/scmsvn/viewcvs.php/?root=opensis

I have also started a project to make the code “database independent” and to enhance it’s ability to begin integrating the code with Moodle ( open source online learning environment - http://www.moodle.org).This project is located at  https://eduforge.org/projects/opensismysql/ and its subversion repository at https://eduforge.org/plugins/scmsvn/viewcvs.php/?root=opensismysql

These projects are part of our pledge to keep the software “Free and Open”. I hope you join us both in development and as a community of users.

Thanks for all you do!

James Tremblay - “Let’s make a difference!”

OS4Ed proudly announces the release of openSIS Version 4.2 for general availability.  Our team is very excited about this release and we are proud to continue our efforts to provide quality open solutions to education organizations around the world.  openSIS  Version 4.2 is a continuing demonstration of our commitment to the education community.  We are grateful for your interest and support and have many new exciting features and enhancements detailed in the announcement below.  We have some other exciting developments that are nearing completion.  Later in November, we will have some news about School Interoperability Framework (SIF) and openSIS, so keep an eye on your email for this exciting development. 

We also would like to welcome to the openSIS family the following new clients:

l        Catholic Academies

l        The State of Oregon

l        South Plains College

l        Adventist International School

Also, for this release openSIS goes to the community as free and open.  openSIS 4.2 is deployed through Eduforge for open source development.  There will be no registration required and community members will be free to add functionality to openSIS. 

We have some specific functionality requests from the community and will soon be starting a developers mailing list to all work together to accomplish these needs.  In addition to the mailing list, we will be adding some Web 2.0 tools to further build community and encourage collaboration among our users and clients.  Look for these changes to come over the remainder of 2008.

Thanks again for your support and we hope you find that openSIS Version 4.2 continues to help meet your needs in student information systems.

Casey Adams

President, OS4Ed

November 4, 2008 - openSIS Version 4.2 General Availability Release

OS4Ed announces the release of openSIS 4.2 for general availability.  Version 4.2 was developed exclusively in Ubuntu 8.04 and tested on both Ubuntu and Windows.  All new features and enhancements are detailed in the Release Notes in the code base available for download.  This version of openSIS focuses on 4 core areas:

1. Stability – Our highest priority in this release is to provide a stable application that users can be  confident in using day in and day out for their student management needs.  Extensive testing has been done with production clients and hundreds of improvements have been implemented in this version.  Included in the installation download are step by step guides for installing openSIS and setting it up for first time use on Linux and Windows so new users get off to a good start.
2. Usability – Many interfaces of openSIS have been redesigned to make the application more intuitive and easier to use.  We have  added several new fields based on feedback from clients who have been using openSIS.  The student information section has been completely redesigned with a complete overhaul of the Address tab.
3. Reports – All reports in openSIS have been completely redesigned to provide professional clean looking reports ready to print.  Pagination and other features have been added to ensure that reports print correctly and on individual pages where required.
4. Validation – Efforts continue here with new validation and protection measures to help clients enter good data and prevent costly mistakes that can arise from deletions.  Easy to understand messages are returned for validation and attempted deletions that help clients understand exactly why the program will not execute the specific action.

openSIS Version 4.2 is a significant milestone for OS4Ed and continues our commitment and growing tradition of providing free quality open source applications to the global education community.  Visit the openSIS website for more information. 

Like many people, I have a profile on Linkedin.com and I have a few recommendations. I didn’t full understand LinkedIN and the potential it had for me until I learned about the groups. LinkedIN groups offer individuals the ability to join a larger body of people interested in the same subjects as you. You can start discussion in your groups, email members, etc.

Somebody commented on one of my blogs today that having to register for free SW applications and solutions was not open and it was just plain wrong. Why? In registration, you are asked to provide some information. Why? So the people who are working hard to GIVE you your free application can communicate with you, can get feedback and can inform of you new developments.

I was speaking with a professor from LSU recently about efforts to reform schools where students were not making advancement. We both agreed that the institution of education in America is essentially broken in many ways. And while our discussion was great and heartfelt, I came away from it with no real new ideas about how to fix a broken bureaucratic institution. There are so many obstacles that I surrender to defeat very time I think about ways that can be adopted to achieve widespread school improvement.