I have turned in the draft of my dissertation, which was a study of writing courses and online "learning management systems" such as Moodle and Blackboard. In particular, I was examining students with special needs and if the LMS platforms used within our department adequately accommodated the students.

We have "template" courses, designed by senior faculty. The primary platform is WebVista (Blackboard). There is no template for Moodle, but it is approved by the department for use in comp and technical writing courses.

IHE has an article about a meeting between Blackboard execs and frustrated users.

Blackboard Wins Lawsuit Against Desire2Learn.

I wonder if open source LMS software became a serious threat to their market share if they would sue Sakai and Moodle?

It appears as though Blackboard's stupefying (with an emphasis on the "stupid") attempt to patent the internet may soon suffer a stroke--Slashdot is reporting that a group calling themselves the Software Freedom Law Center has managed to get the US Patent Office to re-examine the patents, and the smart money says the patents are yesterday.