Comments on: Patents Patently Absurd: The End of Innovation in Education Will Come at the Hands of The Corporate Business Model

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:51:02 +0000

How did Moodle get in the door at the U of M? I understand that there are pedagogical differences between Bb and Moodle and I can see that being a factor, but I doubt it had much to do with the actual decision.As staff, my only recourse is to foment dissent among the faculty and let them start a discussion to reevaluate our LMS (apparently tech staff may not initiate change here; that’s reserved for faculty.)Even getting Moodle supported as an alternative is a no-go here because “it’s too hard to support a second LMS.” Run them in a fair, flat-out comparison and I can’t imagine we’d be supporting two LMSs for very long.

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:37:20 +0000

I know of confirmed cases where Blackboard has intentionally denied support to universities, requiring them to hire their Global Services consulting arm or trying to drive a school to use their ASP (hosted) service. I've heard of at least one case where their Global Services consultants have taken money to work on problems that were known to be unfixable.My current comical dispute with Blackboard involved them refusing to send me a Bb 8.0 installer unless I sat through a webinar and filled out a questionnaire. Given that I'm a sysadmin and not an instructional designer, trainer, or end-user, there's no rational reason to waste my time with such hoop-jumping, especially since a) we're already a customer and b) we pay nearly $40k/year for licensing and "support." I already put up with far far too much bullshit from Blackboard I don't need some Tier-1 support puke treating me like a 4th grader.Blackboard has one mission - bleed universities dry by any means possible. Their software is overpriced, bloated, unreliable junk and I have no doubt they will do anything in their power, legal, moral, ethical or not - anything - to destroy competition and stay the only (rigged) game in town.I long for the day someone sticks a hot hatpin in their collective corporate eye.

By: Prosaic1

Prosaic1 — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:03:59 +0000

There is no recourse for users, other than to push ahead with open source options and hope the backlash is enough for Blackboard to consider what they lose with patent wins in court. No one is impressed by lawsuit-driven business building.

By: OmegaMom

OmegaMom — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:28:49 +0000

Soooo…they patented the “role” model for viewing databases? When are they going to go after, say, Oracle? Or Microsoft? Or providers of non-educational CMS systems? Or providers of accounting systems?This is just insane. How on earth did this get through the patent office? This is a basic concept in database management: different roles give you different views. It’s the basis for most computer security systems in general.This is just fucking insane.

By: uncle noel

uncle noel — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:20:10 +0000

Reminds me of when Starbucks copyrighted the phrase “Christmas Blend” and sued some monks.