By haisam on

"Blackboard Patents the LMS

I’m surprised there hasn’t been more uproar about this yet. The ever-brilliant US Patent and Trademark Office has apparently granted Blackboard a patent for...well...pretty much anything remotely related to learning management systems. As I read it, Blackboard basically owns the patent on any sort of groupware at all that is used for teaching purposes. This could have very serious consequences for both proprietary and Open Source competitors--and I define “competitors” as loosely as possible. (You could probably slam Drupal with this under the right circumstances, for example.) "

http://mfeldstein.com/index.php/weblog/permalink/blackboard_patents_the_lms

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

sami_k’s picture

sami_k commented

http://www.nicklewis.org/node/863
http://www.darcynorman.net/2006/08/02/software-patents-and-legally-requi...
http://www.samikhan.org/2006/08/03/blackboards-patents
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kbahey’s picture

kbahey commented

This was on Slashdot yesterday http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/02/1217219

As much as I hate frivulous patents and the hoarding of them as a legal capital, I don't see this as a threat to Drupal per se.

Perhaps DrupalED, Moodle and others are affected, but not Drupal.
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beginner’s picture

beginner commented

Historically (AFAIK), Drupal.org has never campaigned for anything but its own direct interest.

Last year, when many sites across the internet replaced their front page with a large banner against software patents to protest against software patents legislation introduced in Europe, drupal.org was open for business as usual.

Earlier this year, when Alaa Abd El-Fatah, an Egyptian Drupal developer, was jailed for demonstrating peacefully to protect Freedom of Speech and the independence of the judiciary in his country, Dries refused that a relevant story be put on drupal.org's front page. (Alaa stayed 5-6 weeks in jail without trial then was released - I wonder whether Alaa was pissed when he got out and found out that the Drupal community didn't mobilize for him!).

I would like to be wrong, but I doubt that Drupal, as an entity, will officially support you (and me) against such patents.

Drupal.org will probably never be affected by this particular patent (though many individual Drupal administrators may be), so if we want to take action, we are on our own.
I just wish that Drupal.org could make an official stance on software patents and play as a member of the larger Free/Libre software team.

Anyhow, do you know of any specific actions being called for?

I doubt there is much we can do in this particular case, but the scores of Drupal sites could coordinate some information campaigns through all our sites, against software patents and for free software.

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kbahey’s picture

kbahey commented

Drupal.org has never campaigned for anything but its own direct interest

I don't think your assessment is fair.

Remember that Drupal at present is a bunch of volunteers and a project. There is no official organization. Hence "its" represents nothing here.

Moreover, we are not a political organization.

We all have blogs and write on these matters as we see fit (for example here and here on the specific issue you mentioned, and many others have done the same).

Not putting something on the front page does not mean that "we" do not support an issue or are against.

The problem here is the "we" part. Just look at the ongoing Fantastico discussion and you will see some for and some against from the community. So naturally political or activism issues will be the same.
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sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

Dries did not put anything about alaa on the front page because this is not a political activist site. If you had been following the mail list traffic where this was discussed and Dries stated his reasons for doing this then you would know this and not post inaccurate, misleading and rather unfortunate phrasings.

People did blog about it which was the appropriate place for it, their personal blogs. Several of which are agggregated through Planet Drupal. Was alaa 'pissed'? No. Do you know how I know... I asked him when he was released. Did you ask him? No? Wow.... Really? You posted your assumptions about someone you don't know before asking him? You did? Why? Did you have some sort of agenda? NOTE: You see with this example WHY we try hard to keep Drupal focused on technical issues and not political ones.

There are about 70 people that can promote stories to the front page. As it is, I myself think it is to early in the process to 'knee-jerk' post and react with anger when I haven't had time to read and assess the issue myself. There are some interesting blog posts by people more aware then myself so I plan on following them until a consenseus is reached rather then react with thoughless anger.

In any case. They have the patent. The legal system is slow. Very very slow. I tend to let organizations that specialize in this sort of thing to be my conduit/filter. Such as the EFF and Groklaw

This is a technical site. There are far to many diverse views respresented by people using Drupal to try and be a technical site and a political activist site.

Please stop attacking people you don't know with wild accusations and false assumptions. If you want to create an activists site, then please do.

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
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-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

kyouens’s picture

kyouens commented

Dude. Word. This is not a political community. Sometimes the whole Richard Stallman-style, "us versus them" software as a way of life-type mentality of the open-source world is just silly. The "drupal community" is not a political party.

digits’s picture

digits commented

Quoting http://www.blackboard.com/patent/FAQ2

Is Blackboard suggesting that all course management systems are covered by the Blackboard patent?
Absolutely not. Blackboard is not claiming to have invented or to have received a patent on all e-Learning or on all course management systems ever created. Blackboard didn't invent just any course management system, but the system claimed in the patent, which has achieved great commercial success. Another common misperception is that Blackboard is claiming to have invented or has claims over a broad range of standard e-learning tools standing alone, like discussion boards and chat rooms, which is also not the case.