An Open Source MIS

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Originally Posted by GrumbleDook

In which case can I ask why you chose to develop a different (new) project (ie the project you have finished now) and not use one of the other projects ... this would be one thing I would look at for how you and the other developers would react if another major group of developers also decided to work on this or if they chose to work on other projects, including creating yet another new one.

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I'll just answer this one. The development was started when there were no others around, I believe I started at around the same time as Freemis,Class and Schooltool . If you take your logic to the extreme then we would have no more new open source projects. If we release an open source project then of course anyone is able to pick it up and fork it. It is a risk you take in the open source world, but without risk the world would be a boring place don't you feel?

MIS Build

Being done by the ICT teacher at our school - don't ask me anything about it though, I'm steering well clear of it !! Databases bore the pants of me, been there, done that, got the T-Shirt many years ago on a IBM DB2 database in my old job.....

my question is who do i blame when an upgrade doesn't work, or if something goes wrong meeting the DFe's changes to their reporting needs.
at the moment i can blame Capita, and point the finger, i can demand why they didn't fix it, i would say, i'm not paying you my licence / support fee, if you can't get this sorted....
but if i recommend MIS x (free, open source) then they might point the finger at me :eek:
EDIT 'they' being the management, not Capita, though i think they would also enjoy wagging their fingers at me and laughing.

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Originally Posted by vikpaw

my question is who do i blame when an upgrade doesn't work, or if something goes wrong meeting the DFe's changes to their reporting needs.
at the moment i can blame Capita, and point the finger, i can demand why they didn't fix it, i would say, i'm not paying you my licence / support fee, if you can't get this sorted....
but if i recommend MIS x (free, open source) then they might point the finger at me :eek:
EDIT 'they' being the management, not Capita, though i think they would also enjoy wagging their fingers at me and laughing.

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Whilst the MIS software might be free, surely you'd still have to pay if you wanted support?

Therefore you could still just as easily point the finger at the support company. As long as management are willing to pay for it of course (which they should be as without the licenses for an MIS it should be cheaper paying only for the support contract). There might even be a support option where they will remote on and do your upgrades for you.

Yes of course.
So now we're are looking for a reliable support company with experience, and good response time, and a cheap rate. Yes it's going to be cheaper than most products we are using, but convincing management it's worth the risk is what i think most of us have against going down this path.
On a small scale, for part of the solution yes, it's worth a go, but changing MIS is a mammoth task when going from one big supplier to another not so big one.

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Originally Posted by vikpaw

On a small scale, for part of the solution yes, it's worth a go, but changing MIS is a mammoth task when going from one big supplier to another not so big one.

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As long as the small company is swift, efficient and know what they're doing then I don't see what the problem would be, convincing management of that though... yeah, that is the bugger.

Just letting everyone in this thread know that ScholarPack was released a few days ago.