Microsoft announced end-of-support for NT4 server (and its domain based architecture) some time last year. As far as I understand, the decision among UT ITS was to upgrade everything (including the servers I believe) to 2000 server with active directory in the name of backward compatibility and ease of upgrade. Hence now we have something called AMS (Austin Exchange Messaging System) serving e-mail, disk and web space to the users of University community, which eventually completely replace the uts.cc.utexas.edu based services.
In my opinion, that should have been done a fair (and open) cost/benefit evaluation of what should be next level services. If the compatibility and continuous support was an issue Samba was the first thing that popped into my mind. The benefit of no-cost implimentation (except for training) and full access to future changes should have been an point.
I see the big institutions reliance on MS based products is the major thread to Linux. Do not cite me the market research showing that the Linux growing (and securely) in the server market. I side with MS on that if Linux is gaining any ground on server marker it is due to the replacement of old Unix boxes. Remember, Microsoft and Windows is long on the computers of companies, schools and hospitals before they were on desktop.
My time as a phd student doesnt let me to the open and free software advocacy as much as I would like to do. And unfortunately my field uses softwares working on MS products, hence I cannot keep up with changes. But I'd like to see a movement from the open software, linux based community in UT to petition the University to create Linux based user labs support by the some portion of the ITS fees that we pay. So the students should be given a free choice. Yes, some engineering and natural science departments have their own labs. But the biggest college in the school is liberal arts, which eventually forms the bulk of the naive users I described in my previous e-mail. In some ways it doesnt even have to be a collection of brand new computers with identical hardware. In fact in some ways the best part of using Linux, is to put different hardware into identical look'n'feel, which none of the commercial software can do...
Anyways, just food for thought...
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