K12 Open Technologies

One of this week's School Improvement RFP's of the Week from Edbizbuzz's Dean Millot should be of special interest to open source advocates:

The Alabama Department of Education (SDE) is seeking responses to
this RFP for the hosting and management of the Moodle open source
learning management system.

Integrating open source into the RFP process is an important step in its wider adoption in K-12 education.  Pre-selecting a specific program, like Moodle, is one approach.  

Millot comments:

I would venture to guess that the support of open source software is
likely to result in a far more fragmented market structure than support
of proprietary software systems. In principle, that should exercise a
downward pressure on fees. What this fragmentation of systems/support
means for cross district/state information sharing and compatibility is
another matter.

Regarding fragmentation of the support market... hm... what is the support market for proprietary software systems in schools?  I'm not sure to what extent third parties can and do provide paid support for, say, Blackboard or Powerschool.

I don't think a more diverse support market implies greater fragmentation in data sharing and compatibility, however.  Moving between different implementations of a common open source platform, like Moodle, should be easier than migrating between proprietary solutions.  In any case local customizations have to be well documented and accounted for.

If mitigating vendor lock in is part of the goal of an open source RFP, it is important that the RFP specify that modifications to the official version of the software be distributed to the purchaser.  In a case like this one where the vendor is hosting a web application, under the terms of most open source licenses, including the GPL, the vendor does not have to make its changes available.