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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANGEL_Learning
https://www.zdnet.com/article/blackboard-wins-e-learning-pat...
They even sued the government to prevent reexamination of their patents.
https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2008/12/01/da...
As an open source author who was once interested in producing an LMS, this was a major concern that forced me to explore other fields.
The short version: * Education is socialized. That is, people don't pay for it, instead the state buys it. At university level, this is slightly less true but the state still provides loans which may never be paid back. Even for the rich, who buy their own education, the sector is still extremely inefficient since the main value added is not from the teachers but from the other students. That is, universities are fun…
Moreover it's also provably false. Education is big business in most countries and a significant portion of gdp (and often not "socialise" either, universities, private schools, private certificate/education providers etc.). Despite of that nobody managed to "disrupt" education yet, because education is difficult and most "small, agile" providers in this space are awful, mainly preying on the desperate.
Regarding good lms, to the OP it really depends on what you want. Systems like Canvas, Moodle are catering for universities/school. The requirements for such large organisations might be very different. Why do you find canvas/Moodle bad for example?
In any case, given the huge upfront investment required for a quality platform this doesn't seem like something an edtech startup can bootstrap. An education platform is not a CMS and its not a social media platform. I think especially now with the pandemic experience it has become very clear how rich, complicated and demanding the educational process actually is. The "archaic UI and features" comment hints maybe at too narrow and technical view. It may be a very relevant aspect (eg if young students puke at the UX it is not of much help). But from an education perspective what matters are not smooth appearances and gimmicks but "educational outcomes".
If you dive into the Dougiamas/Moodle team's thinking you'd see what permeates the design/architecture is to be able to translate the huge body of educator experience and infuse it into software. Somehow we need to move to the next chapter of the book they started writing.
That said, end users (students / learners) need not be bothered by the sad state of the current backend: you can configure Moodle so they'll only get to see the easy parts (I've seen Moodle used in primary education on two different occasions).
As for your requirements, it looks as though Moodle's got them all covered (depending on the details of course). Except maybe for the live classes, which will probably require a 3rd party plugin.
Other things to consider:
- Cost of customization: Moodle developers are harder find than, say, WordPress developers. Putting something together based on WordPress might also get you there, for less money.
- Edtech standards: Moodle supports H5P, SCORM & LTI out of the box (WordPress has limited support for SCORM & LTI, full support for H5P). This means you can integrate your Moodle based platform with a lot of other systems, offering your courses to customers on their own platforms, when they might otherwise not be willing to do business with you.
- Community support: Moodle's the largest open source LMS out there, and it has excellent support forums. There's also commercial support available through Moodle partners (and, shameless plug, parties such as myself, who offer Moodle customization services).
- Shopping cart / payment features: you can put individual courses behind a paywall, but overall Moodle does not really support e-commerce features (except through integrations such as Edwiser Bridge).
- Installation & deployment: since you're looking for an open source solution, I'm going to assume you want to host the platform yourself. In that case, you might want to look for a system that's easy to install and maintain. WordPress & Moodle have got you covered there, since they're based on LAMP, for which a lot of documentation and external expertise is available.
- Enterprise features: do you require features like advanced customizable reporting, integrations with HR systems, and certification programs? Then you might want to look into Totara. I wouldn't call it open source, though you can host and customize the source code yourself once you buy their per seat licensing (still cheaper than most enterprise LMS solutions out there). Totara's based on a Moodle fork, although they're slowly moving away from the Moodle core code base.
[Edited for layout; added clarification on Totara]