In the past few days, I’ve had some experiences that truly illustrate why an open source community really is better for communities of learning and working. Our online learning community requires a support contract. Just recently, the module that allows us to send e-mail to our students has decided to evaporate. It is completely gone! One would think that you could find an online community of people willing to help out. Not so. The only solutions that are listed are behind closed doors for ‘clients.’

I decided to look at some open source alternatives out there. I searched for similar errors and found wikis, e-groups, discussion boards, and personal websites all with open arms hoping to help you…..and at no charge. This seems to be a driving force for many people to leave the ‘big box’ software companies and take a leap of faith when setting an alternative like Moodle or Sakai.