Stories like this one are thrilling to read about as an open source enthusiast. However, I can’t help but feel a little embarrassed on behalf of my alma mater - the venerable University of Toronto. Obviously, Seneca has sheer numbers working in its favour - with something like 100,000 students there’s bound to be someone willing to make open source a part of the college community. University of Toronto, however has at best awkward , indirect and abortive efforts to show for itself.
That said, I attended the Free and Open Software Symposium at Seneca@York and was thoroughly impressed and discouraged in turn. Firstly, I was impressed by the calibre of the attendees and the relatively low barrier to interaction with what are normally inaccessible people. Though a handful of these people decided to establish their own barriers to interaction. I discouraged by the relatively low student presence felt there - maybe a dozen or two students made an appearance. With at least 300,000 in the GTA alone, this is hardly what I was expecting.
Universities, particularly students, have a strong incentive to promote open source within their institutions. Their fees go to paying software licensing. Every Dell workstation running a copy of Novell and Windows has to be paid for using student fees. By switching to Linux and other open source solutions the TCO for the computing infrastructure would plummet a saving that can be passed on to the students or invested in better or more hardware (such as a greater density of campus WAPs in choke points like Convocation Hall). By institutionally supporting open source solutions, universities save their students money by making open source viable.
As an open source believer, I am frustrated by the fungal infestation of closed, proprietary controls growing in the form of MacBooks across my campus and hope that more efforst can be made by everyone to make open solutions the most viable solutions and leave proprietary software for corporations with piles of money to waste.