[xrd]

If open source advocates banded together and "sold" this story to local governments, there would never be these kinds of boondoggles. I'm reminded of the same thing that happened in Oregon. Oracle came in with a low ball price, then extracted hundreds of millions of dollars out of the state for a POS health care system.

https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2016/09/post_183.html

[airhead969]

That's how BDUF software consulting works. Design something unusable but make it cost as many billable hours as possible. That way, it has to be thrown away and it's job security for the consulting industry to keep a desperate customer throwing money at non-solutions.

A better approach is agile with customer's actual employees guiding small changes all along from the beginning, and customer's project managers/budgeting managers tracking progress, requirements, and costs.

[duxup]

Is open source really a place you would find what I imagine is an enterprise 'do everything' education related IT application?

I like the idea but that's not a product I think open source folks ventures to build much?

[airhead969]

There are many "do everything" mega solutions like SAP. They're usually terrible because they try to do too much, require changing processes to fit the software, aren't specialized enough in each area for real-world use, or aren't customizable enough. They're often terrible pieces thrown together too quickly under a utopian belief that one app will rule them all and users will just adapt to unusable garbage.

There's nothing preventing a group from making a FOSS replacement of a government project made commercially, even if its goals aren't ideal.

[hutzlibu]

I don't really like to defend SAP, as I had to use it once just for putting in working hours and was horrified by the necessary steps to do so - but afaik SAP is not "terrible pieces quickly thrown together ".

It is rather way overengineered. In such a way, that freshmen to SAP(out of university), get assigned to a project - but for one whole year are basically just have to walk along with the team, without contribution actual code, because they have to understand how it all works together first. (at least thats what I've been told by some people going there)

Sounds glorious and horrifying. I rather did things where I saw actual progress and impact of my work.

[raverbashing]

Yeah, very German

Though to be fair it got there because it was one of the first to kinda solve the problem in a more flexible way than having a system built from nothing

[jck]

I do not understand the nature of this "do everything education app", but there are excellent open source LMS apps like https://moodle.org/

[mrmanner]

This is more of an admin/communication thing. Absence, grades, class schedules, lunch menus, homework...