Go Moodle!
Now, The Open University’s Learning and Teaching Office has started a new programme worth nearly £5 million to build a comprehensive online student learning environment for the 21st century.
The development, which will first appear in May of 2006, and be fully operational for February 2007 courses, will see the largest use of Moodle in the world. Moodle is a free, Open Source software package course management system used by educators to create effective online learning communities.
According to OU's About page,, they have "around 150,000 undergraduate and more than 30,000 postgraduate students." Interesting that they chose Moodle over Sakai given Sakai's development as an enterprise class application. Perhaps OU doesn't like to pay-to-play? That's pure conjecture, but I do sometimes wonder if Moodle will beat out Sakai because of the benefits of their more transparent development process which invites participation by all over the exclusive community source model of Sakai. Imagine where Linux would be if Linus had decided to make Linux "community source" back in the mid 1990's. Would it be where it is today? I somehow doubt it.
Link via elearnspace.
:/
I have posted a comparison of Moodle Vs. Sakai.
nice!
I think the stats are a little misleading because Sakai's community is less open and their membership fees target very large institutions, but then again, this is why Moodle has better stats ;)
Pay to play
You certainly can pay for the SEPP membership if you want to help to bolter the community, but you don't have to pay to "play".
I think that the community is wise in creating a financial basis for ensuring the sustainability of the effort apart from the gracious grant funding the project used to get off the ground. Moodle has a trust fund to ensure its financial future, what's wrong with asking for financial support?
I'm sure you don't believe in getting "something for nothing" if you are serious about providing a sustainable IT infrastructure.
re: Pay to play
There's nothing wrong with asking for funds, but it seems like SPP members get specific benefits which are not available to everyone else (see below). Previously, some forums were only available to paying members (this may or may not still be the case; I have not checked lately). I have no objection to providing technical support for paying members, but I believe--and thus my post above--that open source development works best when development is open and inclusive of all. Perhaps Sakai wouldn't need so much development money if the process were more open.