[seul-edu] [Fwd: Alternative to Web CT?]

[Doug Loss <drloss@home.com>]

XIAO Gang wrote:

> Please forward this message to SEUL/EDU list. Thanks!
>
> I have read people talking about free software equivalences of Web CT.
> In my opinion, it is of vital importance for the future of education
> that free software occupy the market of IT educational platforms. The
> consequence of a proprietary software taking the monopoly on this
> platform market would be exactly what we experience today with W$.
>
> This makes me eager to offer my contributions helping to change the
> trend. With my experience of WIMS (http://wims.unice.fr/), I estimate
> that the actual software development is not a hard task. However, this
> very experience tells me that the real difficulty lies in the
> 'marketing' side, that is, to make people accept the free software
> alternative. Here the problem is not only at the users' level, because a
> viable platform needs content development at first place.
>
> In order to make things more clear, I would like to get answers to the
> following questions.
>
> 1. What do people (well, you) expect from such a plaform? (Everything,
> from the very beginning, right up to dreams.)
>
> 2. What are the existing free software 'equivalences' of Web CT?
> Technically, do they compare favorably with Web CT? If not, what are the
> shortcomings? If yes, why are they not making more noise than Web CT?
>
> 3. Are there already several free softwares fighting with each other for
> dominance, like KDE versus Gnome?
>
> 4. Maybe a commercial software has more means (money) to lobby schools
> into adopting it? Is this a fatal problem for the free software
> competitor?
>
> --
>
> XIAO Gang (~{P$8U~})                          xiao@unice.fr
>                http://pcmath126.unice.fr/xiao.html

--
Doug Loss                 Always do right.  This
Data Network Coordinator  will gratify some people
Bloomsburg University     and astonish the rest.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Mark Twain