so after the USPTO has agreed to review ALL 44 claims of the blackboard patent, they decide MAYBE it would be good if they issued a wishy-washy pledge to not use whatever remains of their patent after that review to not sue open source software LMSs. Stephen Downes has it exactly, "It's a cynical ploy intended to divide its opponents. The appeal should be carried through. The patent should be invalidated. Blackboard's nonsensical case against Desire2Learn should be crushed."
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February 02, 2007
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Quoth she/he...
"The hallmark of revolution is that the goals of the revolutionaries cannot be contained by the institutional structure of the society they live in. As a result, either the revolutionaries are put down, or some of those institutions are transmogrified, replaced, or simply destroyed. We are plainly witnessing a restructuring of the music and newspaper businesses, but their suffering isn’t unique, it’s prophetic." --Clay Shirky
Harold,
Powerful stand. I'd love it if IT guys from around the world decided that they would rather not fix any systems than ran bb, a nice little student boycott would be nice and top it all off with a number of administrators waking up and realizing that all this is really about giving them and their students less choice in the marketplace and NOT about building a better product.
Posted by: mark oehlert | February 05, 2007 at 08:13 AM
Who would they sue anyway - Source Forge? You can't sue a project, especially one that nobody owns. This is definitely an attempt to divide and conquer; a typical move by a typical corporation. All that the rest of us can do is keep their feet to the fire and ensure that the issue does not drop off the radar screen. Personally, I would rather not take a contract, lucrative as it may be, than work with a Blackboard installation.
Posted by: Harold Jarche | February 04, 2007 at 04:00 PM