Earlier quoted context omitted.
TLA?
Three letter acronym
Oh, not TLA+?
Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
111–120 of 164 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#112The paucity of open source LMS likely reflects the uneasy relation of the public sector with open source more broadly. You'd think its a marriage made in heaven: public funds, procurement etc leveraged optimally for common good infrastucture - where that makes sense. But in practice this mode seems entirely marginal. It may be corporate capture, lack of savvy people among decision makers or other factors. In any case…
>The paucity of open source LMS likely reflects the uneasy relation of the public sector with open source more broadly. You'd think its a marriage made in heaven: public funds, procurement etc leveraged optimally for common good infrastucture - where that makes sense. But in practice this mode seems entirely marginal. It may be corporate capture, lack of savvy people among decision makers or other factors. This is in…
> that they just don't trust in-house expertise over basically any vendors.
Another way to look at this: they recognize that they aren't software firms. If you bring in OSS, you have to manage it like a product. You have to recruit, train and manage competent developers. You have to balance competing priorities from "customers" across the firm. That's hard for firms that focus on software, and often impossible for big enterprises.
There's also a cost distribution problem. If you buy commercial software, probably other people are buying it to. Thus you share the development and maintenance costs. You can (hopefully) competent software management too.
I think "open core" is probably best balance here. Yes, we need better funding/pricing models here.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#113The paucity of open source LMS likely reflects the uneasy relation of the public sector with open source more broadly. You'd think its a marriage made in heaven: public funds, procurement etc leveraged optimally for common good infrastucture - where that makes sense. But in practice this mode seems entirely marginal. It may be corporate capture, lack of savvy people among decision makers or other factors. In any case…
> In any case, given the huge upfront investment required for a quality platform this doesn't seem like something an edtech startup can bootstrap.
Exactly, especially if it's supposed to be really generic. I've co-founded 2 ed-tech startups targeting niche areas. In both cases there were dozens of competitors in these niches and some specializing in some sub niches. Those niches are most of the time good enough, usually you can find a mobile or web app for anything.
But as mentioned, working with public or private education orgs brings its own challenges. I expect getting any leads there to take years. It's much easier to target consumers directly.
That said, if anyone came up with a generic open-source LMS, on the long-term it could be quite disruptive because everyone in that area is just constantly reinventing the wheel. It's just a ton of incompatible solutions.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#114I thought that some of the MOOC companies open-sourced their LMS. Have you looked at https://open.edx.org/ ?
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#115Good question and very relative nowadays. You should have a look at ILIAS. It’s been developed by German universities. However, it’s very versatile and pluggable. As a company we are offering several integrations. ILIAS is very strong when it comes to collaboration, but it doesn’t offer video conferences out of the box. Actually, I also don’t see ILIAS in that position. For such requirements you should definitely hav…
Can second that. Have worked 10 years with ILIAS (in all roles, from coding extensions up to editing content). It is a very solid platform with a rapidly moving team and an ever increasing set of features.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#116The open source solutions that exist are not very good/difficult to work with. The proprietary-commercial solutions that exist are not very good/difficult to work with. This may mean that it's a hard space to do something "very good" in; compare and contrast to "ERP" systems. Or "enterprise" systems generally -- an LMS is definitely an enterprise system. (Meaning: purchased for an entire organization; those with the…
> "ERP" systems If there is a good one, I don't know about it. :)
exactly
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#117Not open source, but Northpass has a pretty robust API so you can white-label your LMS. I've seen it used to power Shopify's academy.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#118One reason is that is is really tough to define what an LMS does since it can serve various use cases. Most people who are not familiar with LMSs think of Blackboard/Moodle/Canvas/EdX and mostly for academic/schools.
There is a whole set of industries for LMSs like B2B training, HR/Compliance/Continuing Ed/Healthcare etc. Then you have Product companies who just need to train their customers, create brand recognition etc. I jus spoke this AM to a startup who works with Kids and they need a "Kid Friendly LMS".I regularly see companies try and twist Moodle/Canvas/EdX for these but usually they end up with in-house duct taped solutions.
The challenge is that each industry can have its own needs and requirements and building something that can truly cater to all audiences in one single monolith LMS is impossible.
I am thinking about building an API first platform where you could build your own interfaces on top while the API does the heavy lifting. For example, you want to start a webinar ? Just call "/api/v1/webinar" and build your own frontend for it. Think of it like "Stripe for eLearning".
Disclosure: I run an LMS company so I know the challenges :) If you are interested in this space, hit me up. I am looking for people to join us.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#119The open source solutions that exist are not very good/difficult to work with. The proprietary-commercial solutions that exist are not very good/difficult to work with. This may mean that it's a hard space to do something "very good" in; compare and contrast to "ERP" systems. Or "enterprise" systems generally -- an LMS is definitely an enterprise system. (Meaning: purchased for an entire organization; those with the…
> "ERP" systems If there is a good one, I don't know about it. :)
Depends on what you mean by good but there are many that certain enterprises couldn't do without that well outperform competitors and employees would melt into bubbly goo if they couldn't use them anymore -- but they tend to be very custom made for either a particular enterprise or a very niche set of very similar enterprises.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no good open-source LMS?
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have the same issue with numerous TLAs, most frequently around here: "NLP". My usual thought sequence is "'Neuro-Linguistic Programming'? Uhhh, no... it's not that, not in this space. 'Near Letter Perfect'? Hmmm... don't think so. 'New Lunar Passage'? Has Elon been smoking that stuff again?..." Eventually I figure it out, but for some weird reason my brain doesn't really want to hang a hook into "Non-Linear Process…
Errr isn’t it natural language processing?
It's also a branch of pickup artist pseudoscience.