Development by Davis: Development by Davis: “Evolution of open source and commercial providers for learning management systems” plus 1 more

jueves, 19 de abril de 2012

Development by Davis: “Evolution of open source and commercial providers for learning management systems” plus 1 more

Evolution of open source and commercial providers for learning management systems

Posted: 19 Apr 2012 04:00 AM PDT

Evolution of open source and commercial providers for lms

The recent announcement by Blackboard (Bb) that it was acquiring two Moodle service providers was quite interesting to anyone who follows open source in higher education. Over the years, Blackboard has emerged as a market leader in the learning management system (LMS) arena, through both product development and acquisition. At the same time, Blackboard has attracted considerable heat and a large dose of scorn for a patent the company filed and tried to enforce. That patent was viewed by many to be an attempt to corner the LMS market and to claim invention of many LMS features in use well before Blackboard's supposed date of invention. (Read coverage of the long story and eventual Blackboard loss in the courts.) Particularly for fans of open source, this sort of behavior does not make Blackboard an admired company, and acquisitions in the Moodle niche are much more likely to raise eyebrows than cheers.

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Forges and foundations: Chalk and cheese

Posted: 18 Apr 2012 10:00 AM PDT

Black Duck Software and North Bridge Venture Partners, working with 451 Research, are conducting the sixth annual Future of Open Source Survey. I took the survey, but one question caused me concern, considering what I do for a living. Question 11 states, "OSS [Open source software] forges and foundations have played an important role in the past few years. How will OSS forges and foundations evolve over the next 2-3 years?" Answers range from growing or decreasing equally in terms of adoption, one growing at the expense of the other, or staying the same. I'm troubled because forges and foundations serve open source project communities in radically different ways.