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Blackboard's "Pledge" Not to Sue Open Source Software
Another anonymous reader writes with a link to the Inside Higher Education site. Those folks are reporting on Blackboard's 'pledge' not to sue open source projects used by universities and colleges. The Blackboard patent on educational groupware filed last year has come under a lot of fire, with many organizations simply seeking an open-source alternative. This newest peace offering to higher education groups has the Sakai open source consortium more than a little bit nervous. If Blackboard meant to set people at ease, all it has managed to do was confirm to onlookers that it 'wants to keep its legal options open.' Blackboard insists that this new pledge affords universities a number of legal privileges, and is designed to make educators 'sleep easy at night.' Somehow, very few people seem reassured. Update: 02/02 17:34 GMT by Z : Bad first link fixed.
The first link goes to a Scoble blog entry about completely different things...
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Even with all good intentions in mind, all pleadges/promises will go out the windows when somebody buys the company.
Either donate the patent to OSDL patent commons project or start enforcing it.
(If you don't enforce now it makes it harder to enforce it later when greed kicks in.)
Aren't SW patent wonderful?
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
ZDNet has also covered the story.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Well, it would be one thing if blackboard actually had something to offer, but unfortunately in comparison with other open source (or web apps brewed within the edu) there really isn't much contrast. Meaning, if Blackboard had some desirable features that would be worth paying for, it would be more tempting to purchase it, obviously. Unfortunately, every feature they currently offer can be coded internally rather easily (my school proves this quite well), or it can be added in by some other module - for instance a php nuke forum.
Maybe in realizing this - but realizing the latter point that they would be competing against their own potential customers decided it would just be really bad PR.
See an insecurity in their systems? They'll sue you to shut you up about it.
o rg/acidus/campuswide/index.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20050404014123/se2600.
If you want to start a war with someone, first thing you should do is assure the opposite side of your eternal love and cooperation. Then, when the opposite side is all calmed down and relaxed hit them with the biggest hammer you've got and aim right for the head.
You can't handle the truth.
Bingo. This story looks like a company trying to put a positive spin on the fact that they're in the process of losing their patents due to a plethora of prior art. Their PR people won't, of course, mention this to educators, preferring to sow FUD so that they won't lose their de-facto monopoly over courseware at universities.
As our university is hurting for money and poorly endowed (ahem), I for one, am going to recommend Moodle when it comes to renewing our Blackboard license. Based on my experiences with Blackboard, Moodle looks to be more flexible.
Blackboard to try to keep some face. The Blackboard product heavily utilizes "building blocks" (assuming you have the enterprise version), many of which are open source. If Blackboard is benefiting from open source, attacking open source products may kill or slow down the inovation that comes from the building blocks...
Additionally, I think this is an attempt to try to placate those who are shouting prior art and want to go after the patent and invalidate it... The reasoning might go like, "If they aren't going after sakai or moodle, i don't really care if they have the patent." That is how I see the real purpose of this move... It seems fairly shrewd. Hopefuly higher ed will continue to go after them and educause will keep the pressure up. BTW, there is a joint statement from educause and sakai (PDF) on educause's website. (Here is the statement on sakai's page.)
--JSIf you are never moderated, do you really exist?
If you look at this offer as a game of chess, they are sacrificing a small market segment usually served with discounted prices. As a telling example, most sales to the education industry are very inexpensive compared to the prices real companies and people pay. The Microsoft office suite, as an example, is discounted to under 150USD, while the average person can pay much, much more.
The leverage this gives a company is incredible! Educators are always looking for stuff on the cheap, and the idea that a 150 software package translates into hundreds more of sales at the full price doesn't occur to them. So, they merrily specify it, and that generates a tremendous demand for later sales.
Similarly, by "protecting" open source in an educational context, they are able to copy features that would be built in by the community. Now, the market demands are already known, and just need to be branded and productized.
The real payoff for them is business; both as a part of infrastructure, and as a collaberation tool. Here the price for such tools can be quite high (about 10K USD).
Don't take the cheese, it's on a trap.
This is progress?
I'm going to say, as a college student, blackboard sucks. Only about 15% of my teachers bother using it, and even among that percent, only around 50% of those who do use it know how. I can hardly use the messy interface of this horrible little system. Honestly, if I had a class, I'd just pop-up an invision or phpbb forum. I've only seen the "submit homework" feature used once. Having a place to get your syllabus is nice and all, but in the end all our teachers have free web space they hardly use anyways.
The only decent thing blackboard does is connect to our school's account systems so we have 1 account for 5 different systems (library, e-mail, direct payments and some other system too). And personally I see that as a security risk if anything...
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Glancing at the patent, there are two key pieces. There's a piece that talks about having a role based system where there are specifically teacher, student, and administrator roles. There's also a piece that talks about how files would be managed in that environment, permitting uploads, role based access, etc.
I wrote a system in 1997, predating this by at least three years that did pretty much what they are saying (your patent lawyer mileage may vary). My system was a modification of an existing open source forum product that created the ability for Teachers to come in and create classrooms that students could subscribe to. Any person could be a teacher by creating a classroom, but within the context of a given classroom there was a distinct role of teacher and student.
They filed their patent in 2000. They are at least three years too late. I also know that there was other software out at the time that provided similar capabilities because, to some extent, I was competing with those products at the time.
So I call BS on their patent.
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It doesn't quite matter whether I'm actually right or not. If I was going to start up a company to develop software in that market, I'd now have to either pay a royalty to blackboard, or take my chances in court. One bright side is that a recent supreme court ruling established that you can sue blackboard beforehand to get a judgment on the validity of their patent. But still that will cost quite a bit of money.
That's the problem is that the patent system heavily favors the people that get the patent, whether it's valid or not.
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From BB's FAQ:
My company would like to incorporate Open Source Software into our proprietary software (e.g., include the Sakai Course Management System as part of a commercially-licensed software package). We won't be charging for the portion that contains the Open Source Software but will be charging for our proprietary portion. Is my company covered by this pledge?
No. To the extent that any proprietary software is Bundled with the Open Source Software, this pledge would not apply. However, if your customers wish to supplement or enhance your proprietary product with Open Source Software which is not Bundled by you, that would be covered. Blackboard believes this pledge provides a strong incentive for developers to continue building extensions to proprietary solutions as well as to enhance standards such as those promulgated by IMS, while allowing schools to accomplish all of its information technology goals.
Compare that with:
Oracle and Unicon, Inc. Unveil Plans to Create Next-Generation Academic Enterprise Environment
Then http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ORCL&d=t
vs.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=bbbb
Cage match!
When the country falls into chaos, politicians talk about 'patriotism'. Lao-Tzu
Clearly, they have only received one issued patent and the rest of the application cannot be asserted until the claims are set in stone. They have US Patent 6,988,138 which is currently under review as well. It is a great point that they've got more applications coming and this needs to also be considered.
What do you say, guys? Should we pledge not to sue them in return?
No wait, that'd be really condescending.