My understanding is that Gibbon is free, and would work online (meaning that, as an admin I can access and setup or similar tasks from anywhere). However, if I want to store school info in Gibbon’s cloud, then I must pay.
My installation has been completed, but I am now told that for Gibbon to function online, we must pay. Also that there is no way I can remove all the sample data - I must manually remove each item myself (as in, each name/student/staff and such).
I was not given this impression by someone who helped code Gibbon at their school in Macau, nor do I see anything like this on Gibbon’s information pages.
Please let me know if we can run Gibbon online (with web based access for all involved - admin, teachers, students, parents) for free or not … and if there’s a way to remove all of the sample data, or at least the populated staff/teachers/students data.
If a pricing structure is somewhere in the Gibbon information site, please share the direct link?
Gibbon is indeed completely free to use, as it is open source. The only proviso is that you have a server, or access to a hosted server. In short, we provide the software, you install it on a server, and then you are up and running.
If you don’t have access to a server, we can host for you. This does require payment, but again, it is not payment for the software, just for the server. Email us on support@gibbonedu.org if you’d like a quote for hosting.
In terms of the demo data, you are correct, there is no easy way to install it. It is provided for testing the system only. For a production (e.g. real) install, the best thing is to not include the demo data. Does this cause issues for you? Perhaps you’ve already loaded a bunch of our data alongside the demo data? Hopefully not!
We all know that feeling of waiting! Yes, I would say that public web access might not have been opened up.
In terms of demo data, there is not really a separate “demo verison”, merely a normal Gibbon install with the “Install Demo Data?” option enabled. Exactly the same software, just an extra data set laid on top.
Let us know if there is anything we can do to help.
Great questions. Sounds like you may have heard of me and my work at TIS, being the only Gibbon developer I know of in Macau : )
I happen to be working on a Guide to Going Open for our community, and I think your questions touch on a lot of the uncertainty out there about how open source works, especially regarding it being free. If you have any more questions or roadblocks feel free to give a shout, we’d be happy to help. I’m keen to learn from an outside perspective what information we could provide to help clarify what an open source platform like Gibbon means and what it takes to get up and running.