[FC-discuss] Yale switching to Google Apps / Gmail

[Alex Kozak]

Throwing in 2 more cents: the free software requirement seems less
compelling to me if they're following open standards for mail transport so
that the user can choose any client they want. But admittedly I'm not
totally up to speed on the arguments for FLOSS in web services.

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Gavin Baker <gavin at gavinbaker.com> wrote:

> Adi Kamdar wrote:
>
>> Hey folks,
>>
>> The Yale Daily News ran an article today about how there's almost-definite
>> talk about Yale switching to Google Apps for Education and using Google
>> servers/software to host our email.
>>
>>
>> http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2010/02/09/google-run-yale-e-mail/
>>
>> I was wondering if you guys had any thoughts or good literature on the
>> issues with this (re privacy, data, costs, security, tech, law, etc.). For
>> the most part, the students are overjoyed about this since our old email
>> system is painful to use, so it'd be nice to address usability issues as
>> well.
>>
>
> This was also under discussion at UF when I was there, and is a hot topic
> among the higher ed IT crowd in general. There were similar dynamics to the
> discussion: a lot of students familiar with Gmail interface and unhappy with
> the occasional issues of the local service.
>
> Background reading:
> http://www.educause.edu/Resources/Browse/Cloud%20Computing/27148
> http://autonomo.us/
>
> As others on the list have expressed, it's hard to draw an unambiguous
> conclusion about this development. I do think it's worthwhile for students
> to articulate their free culture concerns in this area, though. Regardless
> of who hosts it, students' email should have strong privacy protection,
> should be managed by free software, should follow open standards, and should
> be accessible regardless of disability.
>
> --
> Gavin Baker
> http://www.gavinbaker.com/
> gavin at gavinbaker.com
>
> It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
>    Yogi Berra (attributed)
>
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-- 
Alex Kozak
Program Assistant
Creative Commons
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