http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_4/levesque/
The latest issue of First Monday contains this paper by Michelle Levesque which offers a non-‘fear uncertainty and doubt’-based accounting of some of the common problems with open source projects. Many of these are now commonplace complaints. Based on my own investigations of existing open source learning object repositories and course management systems, I have to concur that many of the problems she outlines, especially the varied quality of documentation and the limited user interfaces, are endemic and do limit the uptake of these systems when they are compared against their commerical alternatives. And as Levesque says, it’s not that any of these failings couldn’t be corrected, and you can point to some open source projects that get it right. – SWL
The BECTA paper suggests a flawed way to construct an LOR, imo. Taking copyright away from teachers and expecting a lot of work for little if any reward is the way to build a mediocre resource. 😉