e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: EDUCAUSE

  • New Patent Information Center at EDUCAUSE

    Kudos! Find it here.

    In particular, be sure to check out this PowerPoint presentation about the costs of patents to universities.

  • The Blackboard Patent Pledge

    I’m late to the party on the pledge news for a variety of reasons (not the least of which is a recalcitrant DNS server out there in the ether that denied me access to my new blog site for the better part of the last two days…grr). It is gratifying to see that my absence really didn’t matter much. A lot has been written about this in the past few days and I don’t really have anything new to add.

    If you’re playing catch-up on the issue, you’ll want to start with Blackboard’s own page on the patent pledge. Equally important to read and read carefully is the joint statement by the EDUCAUSE and Sakai Foundation boards in response. In posting the letter to the Saki listserv, Sakai Foundation Board Chairman John Norman introduced it with the following warning:

    Bb announced an Open Source Patent pledge today. www.blackboard.com

    In their press release they refer to ‘collaboration’ with Sakai and Educause. Our ‘collaboration’ was to try make it as useful as possible. Since Bb quote selectively from our statement, I reproduce it in full below. It will go up on the Sakai website later today.

    I recommend taking John at his word and read the whole letter, in part because it is very well-crafted and encapsulates a lot of the sentiments–both postive and negative–that have been expressed about the pledge since the announcement. For your convenience, I have reproduced the letter in its entirety “below the fold” in this post.

    Inside Higher Education has a good piece on the story this morning, with quotes from many of the usual suspects as well as a few unusual ones. THE Journal has some good, in-depth quotes from Sakai and Blackboard representatives. Slashdot has picked up the story as well, and includes a few interesting and informative comments. Not covered in any of these are comments from the bloggers you’ll always want to read on this topic, including (but not limited to) Seb, Barry, and Stephen. Also interesting is Elgg developer Ben Werdmuller’s (re)assertion that Bb’s patent wouldn’t cover Elgg anyway.

    Since the community as gotten so good at responding to these issues, I think we should take better advantage of the whole RSS thing and consolidate the various comments for easier consumption. If people blogging on this topic would include “edupatents” as a tag or somewhere in the body of their post text, I would be happy to set up an aggregator on e-Literate that scoops up those posts (and would encourage others to do the same). Let me know if there is interest in this; it would be pretty easy for me to do.

    Now, if you haven’t seen the EDUCAUSE/Sakai statement, keep reading:

    (more…)

  • The EDUCAUSE Letter to Blackboard is Now Public

    Insider Higher Ed has let us know that the EDUCAUSE board has published its letter to Blackboard. This is such a remarkable (and courageous) letter that I feel compelled to reproduce it below in its entirety: (more…)

  • Conversations with Desire2Learn and Blackboard

    While at EDUCAUSE, I had opportunities to sit down with both Blackboard’s General Counsel Matthew Small and the Desire2Learn executive team. In the spirit of diplomacy, everything in this post has been reviewed by both sides, and there are aspects of our conversations that will remain private.

    In my conversation with Matt Small, we spent a fair bit of time talking about the impacts of patent assertion on the educational technology ecosystem. I emphasized that, even if I thought that Blackboard’s patent were valid, I would still oppose their efforts because of the damage that an environment of patent litigation will have on innovation. I also let him know that I believe there are others in the community who feel the same way. (I don’t want to presume to speak for anyone but myself.) In turn, the position that he articulated to me was pretty consistent with his public statements.

    My conversations with the Desire2Learn team included CEO John Baker, COO Jeremy Auger, General Counsel Diane Lank, and Director of Marketing John Mcleod. The main message I took away from that conversation was pretty much the same one that they recently posted in their patent litigation blog, i.e., that they view themselves as fighting for the interests of the entire educational community, including universities, Open Source projects, and proprietary competitors.

    Thanks to both parties for making the time to speak with me.

  • Quick Blackboard Updates

    Between multiple family visits and a case of the flu that’s had my flat on my back the last couple of days, I’ve fallen even further behind on my backlog of posts than I was upon returning from EDUCAUSE. In the interest of catching up, this post will be short. First, several bloggers have already pointed out John Mayer’s interview with law professor Vince Chiapetta about the Blackboard patent. If you haven’t given it a listen yet, do yourself a favor and make the time. We now have a legal expert on record as validating much of what the community has been saying about the patent and contradicting Blackboard’s position on a number of key points.

    Also, Stephen Marshall has posted another summary of the Blackboard Town Hall meeting at EDUCAUSE. Here’s an excerpt:

    Question: (from me) Blackboard appears to be having things both ways by claiming that their patent is so narrow that it can’t be cast as a patent on e-learning systems while also stating that a very detailed analysis is needed to show the lack of prior art in ostensibly similar products like Lotus Notes and FirstClass. Can Blackboard appreciate that this places developers of new systems ina difficult position as they can’t afford to pay for an indepth legal investigation of their new idea, especially in the context of open source or higher education, in order to determine whether or not it is infringing? In particular this is an issue when external research funds are used as the risk of patent infringement is likely to dissuade funding bodies from supporting even initial explorations.

    Trust us – there’s no risk of enforcement against professors. Sadly this is an almost useless answer, there’s no guarantee that they won’t sue our employers, and there’s no guarantee that future management won’t change their mind, especially if a new open source product challenged Blackboards revenue.

    It was also very clear that Blackboard failed to appreciate the very real problem this patent poses for anyone engaged in e-learning systems research. Every granting agency is going to have to seriously consider the risk that funded projects will infringe the patent and be forced to pay royalties – something that is likely to see them pass on funding rather than take the risk.

    Matthew Small also delivered a damning indictment of software patents without realising it when he added that reviewing existing patents is a normal activity when creating software, that should be done as a matter of routine. This is clearly nonsensical for anything other than large software firms as the number of patents is vast and growing and as he himself noted, specialist and detailed analysis is needed to determine infringement. The idea that the creation of software should be a legally bounded and constrained activity is repugnant personally and its sad that increasingly lawyers seem to be controlling innovation in software rather than programmers.

    Yup.

  • So You've Captured Baghdad. Now What?

    Somebody asked me what I thought the theme of this year’s EDUCAUSE turned out to be. My answer was “Blackboard.” I did not attend a single session in which somebody did not make a derisive comment or joke about it. In many cases, (including the Common Cartridge session and my own session on OpenBRR), it actually sidetracked the conversation for substantial periods of time. Meanwhile, there were several anti-Blackboard T-shirts making the rounds. (If anyone has any pictures of people wearing these T-shirts, please send them and I will post them.) As Al Essa notes, the EDUCAUSE board itself has apparently written a letter to Blackboard asking them to cease and desist. Blackboard’s town meeting (described in The Chronicle and in a participant’s notes [.DOC] posted by Stephen Downes), was very tough, with the audience applauding several times at negative comments and questions. And by all accounts, the CIO meeting was an unmitigated disaster. (I was not able to attend; if anyone has notes from the meeting, please {encode=”[email protected]” title=”email them to me”}.) Throughout all of this, Blackboard stuck to their message and showed little sign that they were willing to change course.

    They apparently assumed that we would greet them as liberators and didn’t bother to formulate an exit strategy.

  • Why Teachers' Unions Should Demand Support for the IMS Common Cartridge Standard

    I just got back from the EDUCAUSE conference and man, do I have a lot to write about. I’m going to start with the IMS’s announcement of the new Common Cartridge standard. Now, I know that technical standards aren’t always the stuff that gives you goosebumps. But if you are a teacher–particularly a unionized teacher–pay attention to this particular standard. This is a quality of workplace environment issue. (more…)