• With Moodle, are we really on our own – no support, training or docu- mentation? Can we afford to take this risk with mission-critical applica- tions?
• Do we need PHP developers and other technical staff in-house to sup- port Moodle?
• What is the guarantee that Moodle won’t be put under license in the long run?
• Is open source software, such as Moodle, full of bugs and is it a security risk?
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• Do we give up intellectual property rights to our content by using Moodle?
• Is Moodle appropriate for large institutions like mine?
• Is it worth the hassle of migrating courses already on another LMS to Moodle?
Is Moodle really free or are there some hidden costs?
There is often a misconception that Moodle is free, but this is not entirely true. Unlike expensive commercial systems, with Moodle, there is no license cost. Moodle costs nothing to download and install on as many servers as you want. No one can terminate a license, increase the license cost, or make you pay for upgrades. No one can force you to upgrade, adopt features you don’t want, or tell you how many users you can have. However, with Moodle, as well as with commercial LMSs and other software platforms, you will still incur costs for hosting, administration, support, training, and content development and deliv- ery (see cost comparison on page 188.)
The general experience of institutions using Moodle is that it costs less to op- erate than a proprietary LMS. Art Gloster, VP of information services, at Bryant College (RI), recently conducted an in-house study and found that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for open source solutions was roughly 20 percent lower than the TCO for more traditional technologies. For Bryant College, the big savings came in the form of maintenance.
Many institutions experience equally large savings in the area of licensing fees, as well as expensive upgrades to software. John Barry Walsh, Director of Indiana University’s Information Systems calls this vicious payout cycle “the upgrade carousel,” and notes that with open source, his school was able to save significantly by avoiding it altogether. “Upgrading is the most costly and disruptive aspect of vended systems,” he says.
With Moodle, are we really on our own – no support, training or documentation? Can we afford to take this risk with mission- critical applications?
This concern takes other forms, such as:
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“There is virtually no support except from a community that may or may not be willing and able to help”
Without any revenue stream, what is the incentive for Moodle promoters to keep up the same momentum?
Not entirely true because Moodle has succeeded in creating a community of users who support each other. Free, high quality, technical support is available from the global user and developer community, available through the “Using Moodle course” on moodle.org. This forum provides an effective venue to dis- cuss ideas, troubleshoot, and solve problems. However, to ensure that you get 24x7 support with a guaranteed response time, you could also contract with an authorized Moodle Partner (http://moodle.com/partners/). Moodle.com is the commercial side of Moodle and it consists of a network of about forty compa- nies. They also provide Moodle services such as hosting, consulting, installa- tions, training, and customization around the world. They normally pay a roy- alty on their revenue and that goes into the Moodle trust, which pays for core developers. The community of Moodle support practitioners is also large and rapidly growing. In terms of training and documentation, there is good (and
expanding) documentation available online (www.moodle.org) provided by the
user and developer community. On this site there are forums and discussions, a documentation Wiki where people are documenting things past and present and future, and an issue tracker for keeping track of new ventures, bug re- ports, and suggestions. The Open University’s Jason Cole has written an excel- lent introduction to Moodle for teachers, available as a book
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596008635/) from O’Reilly. In addition William Rice has written a book Moodle E-Learning Course Development (http://www.packtpub.com/moodle/book) available from Packt Publishing. Most users find the Moodle interface intuitive, and this helps reduce the train- ing requirements.
Do we need PHP developers and other technical staff in-house to support Moodle?
Anyone running an enterprise-level LMS of any type, commercial or open source, must have some technical staff that is familiar with computers, Web, programming languages, and databases. Such staff can debug problems, han- dle upgrades, and design appropriate server configurations for your user load. Currently, there are plenty of institutions running Moodle, without any php developers on staff. For smaller installations, and especially for those running the standard version of Moodle (out of the box), the dependence on technical
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staff is much less. However, if technical support is an issue, you do not have to run Moodle in-house, others can host it. You can use one of the Moodle author- ized partners or commercially hosted Web sites to host/manage Moodle for you.
What is the guarantee that Moodle won’t be put under license in the long run?
Martin Dougiamas has stated on record that he is committed to the open source philosophy, and that Moodle will always be free and under the GPL. If for some reason, this does not hold true, since Moodle’s source code is public, the global community could take the latest GPL code and continue develop- ment from there.
Is open source software, such as Moodle, full of bugs and does it pose security risks?
Another common concern from IT colleagues is that using Moodle can be risk- ier than proprietary software because the application is neither mature nor well tested. There are fears about problems with ensuring security, or estab- lishing liability if something goes wrong or something does not work. Moodle software may actually be more secure and reliable because of the extensive peer-review process. Since there is an active community (consisting of thou- sands of programmers worldwide) that is refining the source code continually, bugs and security vulnerabilities should be detected early. Abel of IMS says “It seems counterintuitive: You’d think that if something is open source, it must be easier to exploit. That’s not the case, though. Open source solutions, such as Moodle have proven to be some of the safest out there today, and this has be- come a huge selling point that has convinced higher education to embrace them.”
Do we give up intellectual property rights to our content by using Moodle?
While one should always read the fine print, the provisions of open source li- censes affecting free redistribution and source code do not apply to content authored with those products.