Is getting an LMS accepted and running already so much of a challenge that training managers and departments won’t even consider an open-source LMS? There are quite a few open-source LMS projects going on in the academic world. I’m not sure how many of these have significant commercial implementations. There is of course, Moodle, and also OLAT. A few other systems of interest are reviewed in English at the LMS News site originating in Germany, and LMS Talk also has a list of open source LMS resources. I picked up on on the Paris-based ANEMALAB which offers the Ganesha LMS. This LMS seems to support PENS and was demonstrated last month at the LIFE Fest 2006 in Paris.
I started with a rhetorical question about the enterprise, but now I have questions about open-source LMS and academia. Are there just too many open source LMS offerings without a clear leader? Is the open source segment facing the same challenges that the "pre-consolidation wave" commercial LMS market faced? Or is this segment driven by the lack of viable commercial alternatives in academia (eg, WebCT-Blackboard merger, and the Bb lawsuit cloud hanging over commercial implementations in that segment)?
