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A pioneering project in open source for higher education, uPortal was established in 1999-2000 with the goal of creating a web-based single point of access for the information technology services offered by colleges and universities.
In the late 1990s, several commercial portal products were being marketed to higher education. In many cases vendors offered their products to schools free of charge and collected revenues from advertising (a business model not unlike that of such mass-media portals as Yahoo). The founding group of uPortal saw an opportunity to develop an alternative, non-commercial portal product that would be “by education and for education.” Unlike the portals offered by the commercial providers, the software they would create would be based on standards, and it would be written in Java, a programming language that the core group sought to promote. The project would be led by a “project liaison” (initially Carl Jacobson of the University of Delaware) and would be governed by JA-SIG, a new organization of higher education technology professionals that sought a shared activity to bring the group together.
For an open source software project, JA-SIG took a somewhat unusual approach. The initial software development would be done by hired software vendors. JA-SIG thought this would jumpstart development and increase the likelihood that there would be a market for commercial support for the uPortal software later on. University staff would volunteer their time to uPortal, especially in the design and architecture, but would not be paid to work on it. uPortal was able to pay for commercial software development with grant funds provided by the Mellon Foundation. Later, once the grant money was spent, volunteer software engineers would take over the development of the software.
The beta version of uPortal was released in 2000. The software now has two branches: a 2.x branch and a 3.x branch. Programming for the 2.x branch is entirely by volunteers (mostly from universities that run uPortal and vendors that support it). A 3.x branch is under development, and will be handed over to volunteers when it is released. One measure of uPortal’s success is that it was adopted by commercial vendors as the basis for their portal products, such as Campus Pipeline and later SunGard? SCT Luminis (when that company acquired Campus Pipeline). uPortal is implemented or in production at approximately 150 institutions of higher education, including Yale, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Luminis is used by at least 400 more. In addition, several IT firms have built service businesses supporting uPortal.
In the late 1990s, several commercial portal products were being marketed to higher education. In many cases vendors offered their products to schools free of charge and collected revenues from advertising (a business model not unlike that of such mass-media portals as Yahoo). The founding group of uPortal saw an opportunity to develop an alternative, non-commercial portal product that would be “by education and for education.” Unlike the portals offered by the commercial providers, the software they would create would be based on standards, and it would be written in Java, a programming language that the core group sought to promote. The project would be led by a “project liaison” (initially Carl Jacobson of the University of Delaware) and would be governed by JA-SIG, a new organization of higher education technology professionals that sought a shared activity to bring the group together.
For an open source software project, JA-SIG took a somewhat unusual approach. The initial software development would be done by hired software vendors. JA-SIG thought this would jumpstart development and increase the likelihood that there would be a market for commercial support for the uPortal software later on. University staff would volunteer their time to uPortal, especially in the design and architecture, but would not be paid to work on it. uPortal was able to pay for commercial software development with grant funds provided by the Mellon Foundation. Later, once the grant money was spent, volunteer software engineers would take over the development of the software.
The beta version of uPortal was released in 2000. The software now has two branches: a 2.x branch and a 3.x branch. Programming for the 2.x branch is entirely by volunteers (mostly from universities that run uPortal and vendors that support it). A 3.x branch is under development, and will be handed over to volunteers when it is released. One measure of uPortal’s success is that it was adopted by commercial vendors as the basis for their portal products, such as Campus Pipeline and later SunGard? SCT Luminis (when that company acquired Campus Pipeline). uPortal is implemented or in production at approximately 150 institutions of higher education, including Yale, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Luminis is used by at least 400 more. In addition, several IT firms have built service businesses supporting uPortal.
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