Unix and IT support staff

I like Unix, its simplicity, its power once somebody has learned enough to become productive with it. Then came OCW from MIT and all the open free learning management and learning content management systems. It was all fun to play with this stuff. There was no need to ask any body you just download it and start testing it for whatever it was supposed to do. This totally turned me off from Learning Management System like WebCT and Blackboard where there was no way to change any thing. The whole program acted like a black box.

I will talk to my IT support staff and they will tell me to use these programs and if I persuade them to install program like CHEF, a program that was there before SAKAI they will reluctantly install it but they will not provide any support for it. For some reason IT support in organization including educational institutions like to work with companies. They need the support from the company if some problem creeps up during the software installation and operation.