The Wales-Wide Web

On a long, hot and somewhat confused journey trying to get to Milan. So time to catch up on some long overdue blog posts - whilst the battery holds out. Sorry no links but will come back later and add - no time / opportunity at present

A couple of weeks ago I was at a meeting of the Special Interest Group on Open Source Software in europe. One of the recurrent discussion was on the nature of different Open Source projects. Over the last year we have seen the proliferation of Open Source platforms for learning. More recently, there has been some commentary as to whether or not these platforms scale for large institutional delivery. Three platforms in particular seem to have emerged to the fore, Moodle, .LRN and Sakai. In general the Open Source development community is very supportive of Moodle. The Moodle community is seen as open and inclusive with lively forums and much information available on implementing and using the platform. The opposite is seen of Sakai. No-one is quite sure what it is and where it is going, information on ten open areas of the Sakai site is sparse and the community would seem to be closed.

The end result is a great deal of skepticism - sometimes bordering ion hostility - towards the Sakai development - with a perception that it is a well funded corporate development by and for the larger universities. All this may or may not be true. My own perception is that Sakai is aiming at creating greater interoperability through its architecture than the more traditional OSS VLEs. But certainly I couldn't say for sure. I would be grateful if anyone could point me to a clear account of what Sakai is trying to achieve and in particular if Sakai is aiming to be used by smaller organisations. Scaling works both ways.

We also need to think a little more about the pros and cons of different governance models for OSS. I see some merits in a 'trust' or 'association' based model as opposed to the gut feeling open source community model. But if development projects adapt such a model they need to make their developmental roadmaps clear, for the wider communities in educational technology and Open Source to be able to understand the direction in which they are working. Or it may be we need better differentiation in describing projects. Maybe Open Source is becoming too broad a term.

Technorati Tags: e-learning platforms, open source models

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We also need to think a little more about the pros and cons of different governance models for OSS. I see some merits in a 'trust' or 'association' based model as opposed to the gut feeling open source community model. But if development projects adapt such a model they need to make their developmental roadmaps clear, for the wider communities in educational technology and Open Source to be able to understand the direction in which they are working. Or it may be we need better differentiation in describing projects. Maybe Open Source is becoming too broad a term.