e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Chris-Coppola

  • Blackboard and MoodleRooms: An insight to private equity

    There has been speculation about Blackboard’s acquisition of MoodleRooms and its announcements about support of open-source learning systems. This is also an opportunity to see decision-making by Blackboard owner Providence Equity. The motivation of a private equity firm is rapid increase in the value of its assets. Some of Blackboard initiatives may take several years to take final form; perhaps longer than private equity objectives permit.

    Blackboard describes their software business saying: “We typically license our individual software applications either on a stand-alone basis or bundled as part of one of our six product lines: Blackboard Learn Blackboard Transact Blackboard Connect Blackboard Mobile Blackboard Collaborate and Blackboard Analytics.” Professional services account for 8% of revenue; product for 92%.

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  • Backward University IP Polices Force Convoluted Sakai License

    A couple of weeks back, I was somewhat disturbed to read a post by Unicon’s John Lewis on the forthcoming Version 2.0 of the Educational Commons License (ECL), which is used by both the Sakai and the Kuali projects. While pointing out some significant improvements over the previous version, John notes correctly that the proliferation of open source licenses has a cost in terms of confusion in the marketplace and wonders why Sakai and Kuali can’t just use the Apache license upon which ECL is based. (After all, he observes, Moodle uses plain vanilla GPL.) So John did a little digging, and the only difference he could find between ECL and the Apache license was a clause on patents. Specifically, ECL weakens Apache’s patent protection clause.

    Seeing this, I contacted Chris Coppola, the Sakai board member who has been leading the charge on licensing issues. Chris was gracious enough to post more detail on the issue and help me get in contact with other folks who could help me make sure that I understand the legal implications correctly. Now, I happen to trust Chris’s judgment and motivation, and I am confident that the license would have come out the right way if he had final say. Unfortunately, he does not. Nor does anyone on the Sakai Foundation Board. As a result, ECL 2.0 is disturbingly flawed from the perspective of the edupatent crisis. (more…)