This from HigherEd.com:

Blackboard, the dominant player in course management software, has the ability to inspire devotion and, for the more fervid open-source adherents, not a little contempt. So today’s announcement may cause a stir among those more apt to liken Blackboard to the devil than a gentle giant: The company is partnering with Syracuse University to develop a way to integrate Blackboard with Sakai, one of the primary open-source alternatives.

The whole story

Slashdot has picked up a story stating that all 44 Blackboard patient claims have been invalidated by the USPTO. Such patients may have hindered other Learning Management Systems (such as Moodle) and Content Management Systems (such as Drupal).

In 2003, SixApart released Movable Type version 2.6, which included options for Creative Commons licenses. At the time, I was (and still am) very impressed that Creative Commons licenses were built right into the code of a popular weblog software application. Yochai Benkler's framework of layers is applicable here; Movable Type has Creative Commons embedded into the logical (code) layer. Creative Commons' own use of metadata for RSS and searchable CC-licensed content is an instance of this as well.

I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that WordPress has a plugin that lets you choose a CC license within WordPress also, but will a WordPress user please confirm this? I have a wordpress.com account, and I poked around in the dashboard but couldn't find CC license selection anywhere in the options. Drupal has a Creative Commons module.

Finally, are there other weblog software apps which have CC license selection built into the core software code, or which have CC license selection plugins? Doesn't LiveJournal have a CC option now that they're affiliated with SixApart? This information will help me with a paper I'm revising.

A colleague of mine here at West Point is doing some interesting things with BlackBoard in her composition course, and she's interested in working with people who are doing things on other CMS platforms. This year was her first CCCC, and she's excited about putting together a courseware workshop proposal for next year. Anybody else out there interested in proposing a CCCC course management system / virtual learning environment / learning platform workshop on various innovative ways to deploy Sakai, Moodle, BlackBoard, Drupal, WebCT, Angel, et cetera in the classroom?