On Trust and How Communities Are Organised
Graham Attwell puts it mildly: "The debate over the closure of eduspaces continues apace... there is growing disquiet over the way on which the closure has been handled." And I think this is reflective of the tension that always existen in Elgg. Curverider - the company that makes Elgg - always had the attitude that they were giving free stuff to the community. The community, in turn, always felt that the free stuff was a community accomplishment. The closure sends an unambiguous message: that this was Curverider's, to give or to take away, all along. That is not the picture most people have of open source communities. I have always thought that for Curverider to be successful it needed to embrace its community. Related: Dude, where's my data? Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu, December 18, 2007. [Link] [Tags: Open Source] [Previous][Next]Comments
Re: On Trust and How Communities Are Organised
There's no question that Curverider's technical efforts (i.e., creating, hosting, and operating the Elgg/Eduspaces platform)were significant and costly. They created a platform that the educational community put to use. Curverider learned. The educational community learned.
The success of both the Elgg platform and the Eduspaces community was a joint effort. I am sure that Curverider's new business venture will include many of the features that it field tested through the Eduspaces community.
It is unfortunate that Curverider took the abrupt approach that it did with deciding to close Eduspaces. With such notice, both faculty and students may well be hurt.
Curverider knew (and could see) how Eduspaces was being used within academic communities. It would have been better if Curverider had explained its financial difficulties and sought help from the Eduspaces community. Who knows, a new business model might have results that could have benefits all concerned.
Ben and Dave are young business people. Most likely, they will feel financial repercussions in their new business venture because of the way that they handled this situation.
You're right. "Trust" is a significant part of doing business, whether it is for a profit, or making a contribution. Curverider will have to work very hard to regain the trust of the academic community.
A senior professor once told me that "Faculty members are like elephants with long memories. They tend not to remember good things that happen , but never forget the bad things that happen."
Rick Lillie (CalState, San Bernardino)
Email: rlillie@csusb.edu [Comment]
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Re: On Trust and How Communities Are Organised
Eduspaces was being used for a variety of purposes - learnigndelivery, reserach, personal blogging, community creation, resource sharing, touchstone and guidelines and more. But it is always risky to have your activities housed on an external host. Since this host is free, maintained by two individuals interested in the advancement of free, open source software for use by the educational community, we should be a little thankful. many schools and faculty are making use of proprietary web services - like facebook. If it should shut down I doubt there would be much chance of retrieving data. Were dave and ben great communicators? That's debatable. Were they funded and supported by those who benefitied from the use of Elgg and eduspaces? Hmm? They haven't lost my trust - or appreciation. And Elgg isn't suffering as an environment simply because eduspaces is shutting down. Heck, even if Elgg shuts down we will continue to use the elgg installations we have, and we will continue to add functions as required. dave and ben have established a platform, and made it available for personal customization. They have also left a legacy by contributing to the demise of proprietary learning and content mgmt systems and adding social components to authentic, reflective learning, and the creation and development of learning communities that thrive within and without and beyond the confines of program length and institutional membership. Lifelong, lifewide learning and the integration of formal and informal learning is now a true possibility thanks to advances like Elgg. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]
Re: On Trust and How Communities Are Organised
Apologies for the spelling errors in entry above - I need to remember that two finger typists should edit before posting. I'm too used to being able to recall and edit after initial post! [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]
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