In Dallas at the Jasig Conference, getting ready for the Board meeting where we’ll be looking at licensing, incubation, and some other strategic concerns related to open-source in HigherEd. Already had some great conversations about CAS & credential replay, Peoplesoft integration, and open-source economics & dynamics.
P.S. Ian Dolphin clarified over beers last night that he has not actually hit 2 million miles, and that’s a meme that Chuck Severance has propagated through the net space
A Texas jury has found Kitchener software company Desire2Learn Inc. guilty of infringing on an American competitor’s patent.The verdict, announced this afternoon, allows Blackboard Inc. to demand a ban on sales of Desire2Learn’s products in the United States.
(Via e-Literate.)Michael F. isn’t the only one who’s speechless at this decision. The precedent this sets is uncomfortable on many levels, despite the fact that both:
Desire2Learn has reassured their customers:
With your support and that of the entire educational community, we were able to present a strong case. While we are disappointed that the jury did not agree with our position, we will continue to challenge the patent’s validity and Blackboard’s charges of infringement. We are currently evaluating our next steps.The United States Patent and Trademark office has committed to reviewing the patent. As these activities take place we will provide you updates through our patent blog at www.Desire2Learn.com\Patentinfo.
(Via Desire2Learn)First off, addressing confusion and concerns I’ve heard expressed during conversations with a number of individuals: this decision in no way implies that Sakai infringes on any Blackboard IP. Additionally, both Sakai deployers and any Commercial Affiliate you may contract with for services are explicitly mentioned under Blackboard’s previous commitments not to sue Universities and open-source.So “all” we (the Sakai Community) have directly lost is freedom of choice and a small piece of the spirit of innovation in education. While I don’t live in the right district, drafting Lessig for Congress seems like a better idea all the time. I do wonder however, if Blackboard’s previous “pledge not to sue” open-source products and affiliates might have unexpected implications.Though open-source communities seem unlikely to play the FUD game, does this mean that cautious schools may have only 2 options: Blackboard products or open source? If you’re looking to upgrade an existing LMS or deploy a system for the first time, does this affect your decision making regarding product selection?I should also take the opportunity to point out that this kind of key vulnerability is exactly why the separation of licensing from commercial relationships is such a powerful dynamic. Desire2Learn is by all accounts an excellent company, whose customers are happy. No matter how good the company behind the product, however, choosing D2L as a platform also directly binds you to the fate of a single commercial entity. A company who can fail, be sued, bought (a la WebCT, eCollege), experience a strategy shift (Be Inc.), etc.Participating in a community (or to grab a phrase from Barak Obama “a movement”) like Sakai gives you tremendous long term advantages. You can get competitive bids from multiple vendors due the huge number of commercial affiliates. You can switch vendors if you’re unhappy without having to migrate your service. If Sakai moves in a direction not aligned with local interests you can choose to create your own fork or derivative product. Finally, in the same way that diversified investments allow you to reap the rewards of the stock market while lowering your overall risk — Sakai (and other open source products like Moodle, Atutor, etc.) allow you capitalize on eLearning technology without putting all your eggs in one basket.Update: Michael Korkuska (Sakai Executive Director) blogged about the decision and it’s impact on Sakai and the industry as well.
Well the questions are pouring in (mostly due to my tardiness in writing this kind of announcement) and so, without farther ado…
While it still feels a little strange to say it, as of 2 Fridays ago (2/8) I am no longer employed at Rutgers University. Over the last 9 years as first a student, then staff member, I’ve had the chance to: first study under, and then work with some incredible people. I’ve gotten to watch projects and services grow and evolve into solutions that are used every day by tens of thousands of students, faculty, and staff.
Before addressing my personal situation, I feel the need to speak a bit about the Rutgers Sakai deployment which up until now has occupied so much of my thoughts and energy. I was fortunate enough to see myRutgers grew into a service providing tools and services to every student at Rutgers. Sakai usage is currently somewhere on that curve, with usage growing by leaps and bounds. This Spring’s semester in many ways feels like a qualitative shift in the nature of the service — marked by a huge increase in the number of students asking “where’s my class’s Sakai site.” This semester these questions are particularly significant, as many of them are coming from students in classes where either:
Now to handle the really common question — if the Rutgers Sakai deployment is so clearly poised for greatness, where am I going and why? Well…
Starting this past monday (2/11) I have taken a position with the CampusEAI Consortium, where I will be serving as the Director of Open Source Solutions. Recent years have seen a huge upswing in the popularity, and visibility of open and community source solutions in Higher Education. Sakai, uPortal, CAS, Kuali, and othes have garnered attention, awards, and deployments. Due to significant interest expressed by member institutions, CampusEAI is looking to complement its existing strengths on the Oracle platform with broader offerings in the open-source space.
Are you moving to Cleveland?
No, I’m going to be based out of NJ, though Continental is certainly getting a good chunk of my time for the next few months as I schlep back and forth.
What does Lisa think?
She’s excited. Well, more excited when I’ve been gone < 2 days as opposed to > 3 days…
What do the kids think?
The kids are still getting used to not picking me up at Rutgers. They think it’s really funny that daddy works somewhere they can’t see. Sunday nights are hard. Phone calls are bittersweet. Coming back is good.
Aren’t you on the JA-SIG Board?
Yes. When my career change became definite I notified the board at the January video call. JA-SIG has always been a community of volunteers (stellar volunteers more often than not) and particular given my new employer’s willingness to continue backing my involvement in JA-SIG it was felt that there were no significant barriers to my continuing to serve in this capacity. As always, JA-SIG
So… is your Rutgers job open?
Yes. Though (see below) I’m hiring too…
So what does this mean in concrete terms? My personal definition is pretty simple. We’re looking to help members deploy solutions built on open source software. Given my background, Sakai, uPortal, CAS, and maybe even Kuali are obvious possibilities. I think however, that it’s a broader story than just support for deploying a few specific products. Many institutions have experienced challenges in building around open-source due to shortages in staffing or specific skill-sets. Others have successfully deployed open-source solutions, but been burned trying to deepen integration, or due to staff turnover (a problem which I should note also happens around commercial solutions). So the goal of this new unit is to make deploying solutions built on open-source:
Basically the goal is to allow schools to leverage the strengths inherent in the open-source development model:
So that’s the goal. Make open-source easier, removing barriers for schools large & small — the kind of topics that have continually been commented on lists, in journals, and at conferences. Reducing installation pain. Helping with patch management. Providing support and training. Taking the pain and risk out of going open-source, all while working to make strategic contributions to enable the production of more good software.
It should be exciting.
P.S. Did I mention we’re hiring? Drop an email talking about your love for open-source, and how you really want to join in making it easier: jason_shao@campuseai.org. Oh, and mention you saw the posting in my blog 
Blackboard Is Losing Customers, but What Does It Mean? at e-Literate
“The big loss appears to be unambiguously in Blackboard Basic licenses. One factor that theoretically might have contributed to this loss is consolidation of Basic licenses under a consortial Enterprise license. In this case, the loss of a license wouldn’t equal the loss of a customer. But according to Mr. Stanton, the number of Basic license losses due to consortial consolidation in the last year was ‘immaterial’ because Blackboard currently only supports a very small number of consortial licenses. So it looks like the drop in Basic licenses really does represent a loss of customers.”
I was really surprised to find out that Blackboard Basic customers don’t get LDAP authentication — it’s a feature I certainly expect in pretty much any serious product at this point. In particular, given the recent focus on Identity Management (IdM), it seems that many institutions would be hard-pressed to even consider any products that don’t integrate within a broader campus authentication strategy. Additionally, with LDAP being such a widely-deployed standard, the marginal cost of the feature has to approach $0.
Fortunately, with Sakai converging on the Unicon JLDAP provider, this is a story that we’re at least getting better at, though in the past we’ve suffered from an embarrassment of riches in this area.
Rethink: Beginning Rails: From Novice to Professional:
But where does this leave individual developers/firms/companies who’ve used the logo to promote Rails services or Rails-based products? If the logo is a trademark (and it is), then shouldn’t everyone who’s used it in vain stop using it? I should think so, but it would be nice if there were some kind of “logo program” to replace it—some kind of official “We Use Rails” logo with open-but-very specific licensing provisions to allow people to indicate that they use Rails, or that their product/book/service is about Rails, without necessarily claiming or implying approval by DHH. I mean, when Engine Yard uses the logo, does that mean they’re an “approved” Rails host? Are they more or less “approved” than Dreamhost? If we’re talking about the logo as a protected trademark, then let’s not keep the discussion limited to books and conferences.
(Via nuby on rails.)
Interesting question for lots of organizations. I know a lot of groups are starting to develop sanctioned “affiliate”, “partner”, or other logo programs. Seems One incentive is the ability to then offer usage of a logo as a benefit to joining at some level.
> “Connected world, Connected Software”, “Open source produces better software” (81% of respondents via Gartner)
Matt’s perspective on focusing innovation on the “last mile” plays well with my thoughts on focusing on delivering institutional value. It’s interesting in that he combines that perspective with the pitch that open-source empowers you to build software to suit your needs, as opposed to being at the mercy of a vendor. For all that we spend time trying to prevent forking (in a good way 
, I do agree with his perspective that forking is perhaps the definitive open-source right.
2 interesting facts mentioned:
> Research shows that 85-100% of core development work is done by less than 15 core developers. 55% of projects get no outside involvement, 72% have less than 2 developers.
The implication of this seems to be a need for projects to enable “drive by development” to gradually expand the circle of contributors. Modular architectures, anything that enables the same people who would contribute small patches or other pieces.
70% GPL “marketshare” for licensing in open-source. It’s funny that as a Java developer, Apache looms so large, but that’s an interesting number to consider in terms of the dynamics of free software. Also, given the uncertainties behind Apache+GPL, makes uPortal’s new-BSD license possibly more of an asset than we would have thought.
Conclusion: “Capitalist Manifesto.” Matt posits that open-source has a huge opportunity in higher education. Both because open-source is easiest to examine, teach, and learn from, but also because we have more interest and ability to share — administrative IT systems typically aren’t a differentiator in Higher Education…
Matt has 10 commandments:
An audit conducted by Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) found 283 potential patent infringements in the Linux 2.4 and 2.6 code base. The OSRM, a group that offers indemnification against Linux copyright infringement claims, conducted a study in advance of the expansion of its indemnification offerings to cover patent infringement. According the OSRM, 27 of the patents are held by Microsoft, which has signaled its intention to make patent licensing a major source of future revenues. Another 98 are owned by companies with heavy Linux investments, including 60 from IBM and 20 from HP. HP acknowledged the possibility of patent infringement risks two years ago in an internal memo, which was subsequently made public.”
Consumers’ digital rights debated
This tape was purchased in Chinatown in Washington, D.C.,” he said, reading from its cover. He told the subcommittee that tools by 321 Studios LLC produced the tape, and he pointed to a warning label indicating that reproduction for commercial use is prohibited — drilling home his point that labels and good faith hardly prevent illegal sales of DVDs.
While Jack Valenti has a point that it is increasingly easy to obtain high-quality forgeries, I think he’s missing the gist of the communities arguements.
My question is: If I’m truly just licensing the content on my DVD, why can’t I get a new one if I scratch it, for some reasonable $3-5 cost to cover the price of the physical media? Or, why can’t I rip my DVD to a portable iPod like device. Or keep a computer jukebox on my laptop?
business2blog: Buy One OS, Get the Second One Free – Well, the answer, due to be announced later today, is breathtakingly simple. Novell will … sell Netware and Linux simultaneously. When a customer licenses Netware, he’ll also get a license for Novell’s recently acquired SuSe Linux included in the price. For Novell, it’s a sensible move: It’s unlikely SuSe will lose many sales through this program, since any customer who’s conservative enough to have held on to Netware all these years is unlikely to leap into Linux. Accordingly, Novell’s making it easy for customers to switch. All the Novell network services that currently come with Netware will work identically on Linux, and with the new licensing program, customers won’t have to buy a new operating system. In essence, they’ll just flip a switch when they’re ready.
Novell seems to be positioning Linux as a straight transition product, much the same way that Apple transitioned Mac users to OSX. It’s interesting that companies are increasingly using Open Sourced foundation API’s to build their value added infrastructure on top of.
I wonder if eventually the industry will look like Microsoft on one end vs. everybody else? Open source lets everyone start off on a current, mature code base and add their value on top. It prevents any kind of hijacking (as seen by “(extlink)Nokia in the Symbian group”:http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39149465,00.htm right now.)
I wonder if Open-Sourced API’s will become the lingua-franca of programming? Perhaps this is Software’s reaction to commoditization. When projects are no longer profitible, but have a sizable user base, just open-source them to take the strain of maintaining loss leaders off of your corporate record books.
In Cem Kaner’s blog: Software Customer Bill of Rights Cem Kaner discusses issues related to increasingly restrictive end user licensing agreements for various software, and how they are diverging from commonly accepted fair use rights for both software and other copyrighted works. Finally, he addresses issues of embedded software in items like automobiles, medical devices, etc. All in all a good read. Would also be a good item to forward to a legislator, both federal and state, seeing as “UCITA”:http://www.law.upenn.edu/bll/ulc/ucita/2002final.htm and other laws have been aggressively pursued on the state level.
