{"id":359,"date":"2007-02-01T12:15:26","date_gmt":"2007-02-01T16:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattclare.ca\/wordpress\/2007\/02\/01\/more-blackboard-v-sakai-news\/"},"modified":"2007-02-01T12:23:17","modified_gmt":"2007-02-01T16:23:17","slug":"more-blackboard-v-sakai-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/2007\/02\/01\/more-blackboard-v-sakai-news\/","title":{"rendered":"More BlackBoard v. Sakai News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img align=\"right\" alt=\"eLearning Held Prisoner\" id=\"image361\" src=\"http:\/\/mattclare.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/elearningprisonerblur.jpg\" \/>Apparently my blog has become, between the Smashing Pumpkins and car postings, a bit a of a reference about BlackBoard&#8217;s U.S. Patent No. 6,988,138 &#8211; their patent of the electronic teaching and learning of human beings.<\/p>\n<p>BlackBoard (Bb) now owns it&#8217;s major competition, WebCT, which is the tool that consumes most of my day job.<\/p>\n<p>In previous posts I commented on what I thought of the patent (<a href=\"http:\/\/mattclare.ca\/wordpress\/2006\/08\/03\/blackboard-goes-metallica\/\">BlackBoard goes Metallica<\/a>) and on the uproar that ensued when Matthew Smalls et al. from Bb agreed to be on a panel at Sakai&#8217;s (one of the main two open source alternatives) Atlanta conference in December (<a href=\"http:\/\/mattclare.ca\/wordpress\/2006\/12\/06\/bb-v-sflc-sakai-moglen-rational-thinkers-et-all\/\">Bb v. SFLC, Sakai, Moglen, rational thinkers, et al.<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/mattclare.ca\/wordpress\/2006\/12\/06\/follow-up-with-the-bb-team\/\">Follow up with the Bb team<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Today Bb issued a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blackboard.com\/patent\">non-enforcement pledge<\/a> that seems to have pleased both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.educause.edu\/ir\/library\/pdf\/EPO0705.pdf\">Sakai and EDUCAUSE who issued a joint statement<\/a> shortly afterwards, with some reservations.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d have to agree with Sakai and EDUCAUSE both in that this removes any threat to open source groups and educational institutions and that this is an appropriate move on Bb&#8217;s part.  That said, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.softwarefreedom.org\/news\/20070125a.html\">Software Freedom Law Center&#8217;s move to invalidate this overly broad patent<\/a> should continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently my blog has become, between the Smashing Pumpkins and car postings, a bit a of a reference about BlackBoard&#8217;s U.S. Patent No. 6,988,138 &#8211; their patent of the electronic teaching and learning of human beings. BlackBoard (Bb) now owns it&#8217;s major competition, WebCT, which is the tool that consumes most of my day job.&hellip; <a class=\"continue\" href=\"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/2007\/02\/01\/more-blackboard-v-sakai-news\/\">Continue Reading<span> More BlackBoard v. Sakai News<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,9,2,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}