I'm at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) in San Francisco this week. The theme of the event is "Putting Open Source to Work." In his opening remarks Matt Asay noted that we're well beyond open source as an uncertain phenomenon. Enterprises all over the world are using open source in mission critical enterprise applications and the numbers are rising. 65% of the respondents to one of the surveys he referenced said that open source sparked innovation in their enterprise.

The Sakai community is demonstrating a great deal of innovation in eLearning software. New tools, capabilities, improvements in the user experience, accessibility enhancements, and integration with other core technologies are being added very rapidly. I'm very pleased to see growing momentum in the teaching and learning focused part of the community. One example of this is a new program to recognize innovation using Sakai as a platform for teachers and students to engage with one another in innovative ways. The stories and examples that come from this award program will be great examples of "putting open source to work."

I had to leave a before the end of the Sun ERC conference yesterday to catch a flight but I participated in a few very worthwhile sessions earlier in the day. The opening sessions were excellent. Greg Papadopoulos kicked things off with a discussion of cloud computing. His talk wove together the central idea of sharing to create communities, and communities creating markets with some of the changes we're seeing as a result of the commoditization of technology services, as well as the interplay between open source software and software as a service.

The next act was a very entertaining and thought provoking talk about the characteristics and evolution of generations from the G.I. Generation to the Millenials. I'll probably be reading his book "Millenials Rising" soon. I snapped a couple of shots from his slides but they didn't come out very well.

The whole event is recorded so if you have some time and didn't make the event you might check it out.

After lunch I participated in a repeat panel session on administrative computing with Casey Green (Campus Computing Project), Jonathan Markow (JA-SIG), Robert Sherratt (University of Hull), Jay Visvanathan (Sun). The session focused on administrative systems like Kuali Financial System, uPortal, CAS, Kuali Student, and in general, the impact of open source in this area and the challenges. The challenges discussed were, not suprisingly, about people, change, and processes rather than technology. One of the key challenges we discussed a bit was what I'll call the "consumability" of open source software. There's a belief that open source software doesn't fit into the accepted procurement practices, that the cost structures and risk analysis is very different, etc. Casey noted the rather significant rise of enterprise open source (10% of the schools responding to the Campus Computing Survey said they'd standardized on an open source eLearning platform). Robert also discussed the University of Hull's recent selection of Sakai and how they evaluated the viability of the communities and commercial support for the open source contenders as they did the viability of the companies for the proprietary choices. I commented on the spectrum of open source adoption. On one end, you have institutions that consume open source software the same way they've consumed proprietary software in the past. They purchase it from a company like rSmart or Sun using standard procurement practices, they get training, implementation support, legal assurances, a number to call when there's a problem, and regular software updates and maintenance. On the other end of the spectrum institutions download the software, compile and deploy it themselves, and have developers and system engineers to maintain and support it on campus. Of course it's not black and white. One of the great things about open source is that institutions have a choice and can find the point along that spectrum that suits them best at any point in time. From a participation and contribution perspective, institutions at either end of the spectrum contribute to the community in different ways: At the "consume" end, the school is paying a commercial organization who is immersed and contributing on their behalf; At the "DIY (do it yourself)" end the school is typically engaged directly writing code, testing, and contributing in a variety of ways.

This morning's post got me thinking about case studies and I realized that there's another great case study on Kapiolani Community College's use of the Open Source Portfolio and Sakai. I don't think it's been widely available so hopefully one of the three people that read this blog will find the attached PDF and share it. :-) Here's a couple of teasers:

As implementation of the rSmart Sakai CLE portfolio began two years ago, the hope was to improve student performance. But, something remarkable happened on the way to ePortfolios: In addition to student engagement in ePortfolios, faculty using portfolios were “transformed as teachers,” says Vice Chancellor Pagotto. “Very significant is what happens to the teacher in the classroom.”

“We’ve been subscribers to WebCT from the initial launch, but we’re winding up our contract and we’ll be going with Sakai”

I just finished listening to a recorded webinar where Josh Baron from Marist College discussed his journey from Sakai (open source) skeptic to a campus advocate, Sakai Foundation board member, and leader in the Sakai teaching & learning community.

Real, documented stories about Sakai have been few and far between to date. There are lots of successes but few have been able to slow down long enough to document their journey in a way others can easily consume. The best way to learn about the real success stories has been to attend the conferences. I'm glad to see the Marist story documented, and I'm eager to see more. It should provide a very valuable perspective for the growing number of institutions looking for a better alternative to Blackboard and other proprietary systems. Thanks Josh, this is a great contribution.

Marist College's Sakai Journey: A Story of Innovation

I've just returned from my second Open Source Think Tank hosted by Olliance and DLA Piper. The event is a very interactive discussion of a variety of open source topics. The participants are the leaders of commercial open source companies and open source projects, analysts, VC's, CIOs that have OSS in their enterprise, etc. It's got to be the most significant gathering of open source business experience and talent.

At the end of last year's Open Source Think Tank there was a recognition that the line between open source and proprietary companies would blur. In time software companies would have both proprietary and open source software elements and business models that matched. Even a year ago we speculated that there are probably few software companies that didn't use open source software at all.

This year there seems to be a resounding agreement that all of our "commercial open source software companies" are simply software companies. During one of the panel sessions a group of CIOs were asked "What would you like to tell the commercial open source companies in the room?" One CIO's answer was particularly representative:

"You're not OS vendors. You're software vendors that happen to be ahead of the pack. You're using the most effective development and distribution model. You have a competitive advantage in the communities and approach. I expect you to become the next generation of software vendors."

Much of the discussion here was about what we (those of us formerly known as commercial open source software companies) need to do to become more mainstream. Or, as one of the CIOs put it, move out of 'junior varsity status.' Some key discussion points and challenges we've identified and discussed are:

Ease of consumption. The consumers of our software and services need us to fit better into the mainstream expectations of software companies. We need to improve the total experience interacting with us a companies including downloading, installing, deploying, using, managing, supporting, and procuring.

Integration with other software in the ecosystem. There's a need for better integration in the current software ecosystem. Such as "certified" integration, testing, and support both vertically in the software stack (OS, DB, App server, etc.), and horizontally with other business applications that combine to solve real problems.

Licensing and IP. The complexity of open source intellectual property was a key concern discussed throughout the event. It's clear that there's at least a perceived risk factor associated with open source software IP that we need to address. One person made a comment that OS licenses are an issue because people actually read them, as opposed to proprietary licenses. While there are a lot of OS licenses, in reality proprietary licenses are almost all unique and far greater in number. The OS licensing and IP problem breaks down into partially an education problem, and partially a compatibility problem between reciprocal (like GPL) and non-reciprocal licenses (like BSD and Apache). In any case there's a perceived problem if not a real one and it is a barrier to adoption.

Business models and commercial engines. Many people speak of open source businesses, and open source business models. Most (if not all) of the people at this event agree that open source isn't a business model. That's just not the right way to think about it. Software companies do have to think about the impact open source software will have on our business models. Companies building businesses primarily from open source software have been inventing and re-inventing business models that deal with the unique intellectual property, development, and distribution models for ten years. There are some best practices today but one of the key challenges remains to create a commercial engine that appropriately adds value and benefits both the development/user community as well as the customer community.

I'll probably write more later as other thoughts about the conversations at the event begin to gel. Hats off to Andrew and Mark for bringing us all together. It continues to be a thought provoking event and a great opportunity to meet others facing similar challenges.

Michael Feldstein posted an entry yesterday called Blackboard Advertises an 'Open Source LMS.' He's got a couple screen shots (like the one below) that capture the ad. The ad doesn't surprise me at all. They've been lying to their customers and to the market about open source since they first identified it as a serious threat to their monopoly. What's really suprising to me is that they are able to trick their customers into helping them spread the FUD. There are several video testimonials on their site that they've labeled as open source and they have customers talking about the risks of freeware and shareware (which are unrelated to open source). In other places they try to appear aligned with open source.

Indeed, it's not surprising at all that they lie and deceive to protect their monopoly. What's surprising is that they get away with it.

Very cool new initiative called FOSSBazaar launched by HP to foster best practices in open source governance. I just registered for FOSSBazaar after reading HP Launches Open Source Governance Initiative. I haven't fully digested the initiative yet but at first glance a couple of things impress me: 1) There's a lot of interesting and unique resources that appear to be well organized; 2) People I know and respect are involved. 

The following excerpt is from a short article in the Chronicle pulled from Martin Weller's blog.

“...in order to understand web 2.0 you have to act 2.0. I think too many academics are guilty of seeing social networking, or any popular tool, as something to be researched, but not something to be experienced and used. This is both rather a snobbish attitude and also misses the point. Signing up for an account, dropping in for a couple of weeks, doing a survey and then disappearing does not gain you an understanding of how these things are really being used.”

This excerpt got me thinking about what we're doing with Sakai. In some ways, thinking about a new eLearning platform seems to miss the point just as Martin points out. The Sakai community is sure to outpace the innovation capacity of the 1st generation of eLearning tools, and of company's like Blackboard using traditional development models that don't leverage the power of community.

That said, even the amazing pace of innovation in the Sakai community will have a hard time replicating the current state of the art... or the current 2.0 thing that educators should be trying. If the Sakai community were simply developing the next generation eLearning system I think we'd 'miss' just like Martin suggests. We'd miss the opportunity to make it easy for educators to experiment with the latest technologies and to use them effectively with students. But Sakai's goal is much more ambitious and compelling than creating YALMS (Yet Another Learning Management System)...

For me, this is where the view of Sakai as a platform for innovation is really exciting. Sure the CLE is an eLearning application that can be used out of the box as easily as any of the proprietary systems like Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Angel, and others. It has a place for a syllabus, a grade book, assignments, and all the standard features you need. But it's also a platform for innovation. It gives the worlds leading institutions a way to make applications like Facebook and Google gadgets easily accessible to educators. Then, because these capabilities are built on an open platform accessible to anyone, the platform may actually make it easier for educators to experience and use these "2.0" technologies.

This morning my Google alerts and RSS feeds (and a few email forwards) pointed me to several articles based on Datamonitor's report (Nov 2007) on open source in education. The report details spending on software and services for open source solutions within the Education Market. I haven't had a chance to read the report (it's $1500 US) but I did pick up a few key findings from the few articles I read:

• Spending will increase 70% between now & 2012 to $490M
• Spending estimate only covers operating systems and eLearning systems (no ERP)
• Recognition that although there isn't a license to use the software, maintenance, support, and services spending continues

Top attractors to open source according to the report:

• More control over how the applications are developed
• Better return on investment
• Increasing government interest
• Dissatisfaction with Blackboard

One thing that strikes me about this report and many others like it is how ineffective open source software communities and companies are at getting the word out that there are great support and services options that make open source applications as easy to "consume" as proprietary applications. And how effective those that profit from the status quo are at amplifying the FUD factor that you have to have a cadre of developers to support open source software.

"Primarily among these issues is a lack of experienced personnel within an institution. Maintaining and upgrading open source solutions is not a simple process and while communities exist behind open source solutions there is no one at the end of a phone to help fix glitches--as with proprietary software."

On the one hand I'm happy to see continued validation that there's a clear and growing need for the kind of service my company (The rSmart Group) provides. On the other hand we (the Sakai and Kuali communities) and we (rSmart, IBM, and others) clearly need to do a better job at getting the word out than the old guard (Blackboard and others) are at keeping it from being heard.

Correction: I corrected the link to Joe's response. Thanks for pointing that out Trent.

Last month I commented on The ePortfolio Hijacked by Trent Batson. This month there's a great response written by Joe Shedd at Syracuse University. Joe is one of the leader's responsible for implementing the concepts he describes in Sakai's ePortfolio and assessment management capabilities.