Ruby, Blackboard and the Challenge for Open Source

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By most accounts, Blackboard and WebCT are among the most hated pieces of commercial software ever. Yet despite this, the two have captured most of the university learning management software market. When the two companies merged, creating a monolith in educational software, pundits hailed it as an opportunity for open source. What opportunity, though? Despite the hated commercial software, open source alternatives, such as Sakai, Moodle and Bodington still claim only a small market share. We need to recognize that open source software remains, even for those who want to use it, difficult to use and even more difficult to install. We need to recognize that interoperability remains a challenge and that issues such as licensing, patents and digital rights management lurk as hurdles to be faced in the future. And most of all, we need to recognize that open source software, if it seeks merely to emulate commercial software, will always lag behind commercial software. What would a successful open source strategy look like? This talk will look at some successes, and some failures, and draws some conclusions.



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Stephen Downes, Senior Researcher, National Research Council, and Author of OLDaily (Online Learning Daily)

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Stephen Downes lived and worked across Canada before joining the National Research Council as a senior researcher in November, 2001. Currently based in Moncton, New Brunswick, at the Institute for Information Technology's e-Learning Research Group, Stephen has become a leading voice in the areas of learning objects and metadata as well as the emerging fields of weblogs in education and content syndication. Stephen is perhaps best known for his daily research newsletter, OLDaily (short for Online Learning Daily), which reaches thousands of readers across Canada and around the world. His work also includes the development of educational content syndication systems such as Edu_RSS and DLORN along and the design of a digital rights management system for learning resources. Stephen is also frequently to be found the road giving seminars and lectures on the field of online learning, including the notable Buntine Oration delivered in Perth, Australia, in October, 2004.