Friday, January 19, 2007

FLOSS

FLOSS is a new acronym to me. I'm not sure that it would be allowed in France but it has a certain ring. I believe it translates as Free/Libre Open Source Software.

I have been following the discussions about open source or commercially produced Virtual Learning Environments with some interest. As a student I must admit I was somewhat disappointed by Blackboard, but I suspect my opinion had been rather clouded by my limited but wonderful experiences as a distance learner at the OU.

I have no axe to grind in this discussion. I drift between open source and proprietary software, trying to choose the right software for the job.

Today I came across these two links.
They both point to the same report but from slightly different perspectives.

The BBC report that "Open Source gets European Boost"
while
the Monkey Bites highlights a "Huge New Study of Free / Open Software."

I am no economist but I suspect there are important arguments here. We all hope that pedagogical arguments lead discussions about choice between open source or commercial VLE
s but experience indicates that the finance department might also be interested in our discussions.

My experience of managing a school budget was that far too often the opinion of accountants determines educational policy. In this case it could just be that the accountants agree with the Open source movement.

A version of this post appeared as a comment at Learning Zone, a University of Glamorgan Blog.

1 comment:

  1. Mike, you know I seriously don't understand why the question is even there. When the open source is giving me all what I need and more with proper and guaranteed support so why should I pay all this money for less quality. I am not even speaking as a developer who was seriously annonyed by blackboard and enjoyed moodle; I am speaking as a neutral user. It is not only an issue for me in the VLE debate, I see it almost everywhere especially with databases too.

    But, then I say ok, if people want to pay money, let them do it ;)

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