The Ed Techie

Run me through the Blackboard business model again

So Blackboard has won the initial ruling in Texas, with Desire2Learn ordered to pay $3.1 million compensation. Obviously a stupid and dangerous ruling, but as the excellent Michael Feldstein points out, who's made money out of it anyway?

It strikes me there are three ways to be the market leader in an industry:

i) Have such cool products it doesn't matter how you behave (cf. Apple)

ii) Have an average product and bully everyone else out of the market so the customer has no choice (cf. Microsoft)

iii) Work with your customers to develop your product and get good will (cf. nearly every other tech company).

I don't have an MBA, but it strikes me that option i) is damn hard to pull off and happens to only one or two products in a decade. Option ii) is so old school, industrial type thinking that even Microsoft are shying away from it now. This is particularly true in a sector like education. Unlike, washing machines say, people really care about education. You can't bully them, treat them with contempt and work against the community and expect to have the market. People are too smart and will work around you. Which leaves option iii) as your only sensible option. And the BB patent is about as far as you can get from this as is imaginable.

So when universities find ways to deliver, support, facilitate learning online (for instance using a set of third party apps held together by eduglu), are BB going to sue them? And will they sue every application in the pack? Google Calendar when used in a loosely coupled learning suite is now in infringement of copyright?

You have to say that when it comes to misunderstanding your market, the BB patent will be a classic case study. Until we have the opportunity to look back and laugh however, we should make sure we do everything to boycott them.

BB patent reexamination - all good news?

As you'll probably have seen elsewhere, the Blackboard patent is being re-examined, the prior art raising serious concerns (never!). While this has generally met as a welcome development (it would be more worrying if it wasn't being reexamined), a cynical part of me thinks that it may not be the victory it seems. These reexaminations can take two years, during which time the patent hangs in limbo. Perhaps this was BB's intention all the time - it isn't about actually getting the patent, it is a means of undermining competitors while making yourself look dominant. If you were an institution choosing a VLE now, the threat of the patent might make you decide against another commercial system such as Desire2Learn, and make you think that BB was the only way to go, whether you liked it or not. The panopticon works as a control method because you could be monitored, not because you are being watched all the time. In the same way the patent works because it could put others out of business, not because it will. And the longer that uncertainty reigns, the better.

It might also make you nervous about going down the open source route (despite those reassurances from BB), but I think this is where the patent has backfired. It has inadvertently raised both the profile and the imperative for open source solutions, and thus made the commercial option seem more precarious.

What BB's patent really tells you about them

I gave the keynote at the BB users’ conference yesterday in Durham. As I have blogged before I had some reservations about this. I think it was worthwhile though – I talked about web 2.0 and some of the usual VLE topics I have covered (succession, metaphors, future directions, etc). From a BB audience perspective the key slide was one that focused on the patent where I played the YouTube movie on software patents, gave some of Michael Feldstein’s interpretations of the patent, and linked it back to the succession model. The Blackboard company representatives in the audience looked a little unhappy with this, although slightly battle weary too – I suspect they are getting tired of talking about it. In the questions someone asked me about other patents and I outlined some of their dangers and why I considered them an ‘educational menace’. So, it was a good audience to raise that topic in (in many ways better than preaching to the converted at an open source conference, say). I think it is also another example of why it is such a dumb move on BB’s part. Without the patent I wouldn’t have said anything bad about them, I had a lot of time for them. What the patent does is effectively polarise users, forcing them in to mutually opposing camps. It has made me much more of an advocate of open source for example, and that reaction manifested across many HE institutions will ultimately do a good deal of harm to BB. If I was an investor in BB I would be seriously questioning the wisdom of Michael Chasen, its CEO, in pursuing this strategy.

The theme of the conference was the power of 2.0, and was all about web 2.0 implications. One can’t imagine a less 2.0 approach than BB’s patent (it hardly chimes with the principles of openness, freedom and respect for users does it), so the other thing is demonstrates is a complete lack of understanding about the current technological and social zeitgeist – and would you want to place so much of your institution’s strategy in the hands of a company that is so far from getting it?

I patent it

Scott Wilson points to another ludicrous patent - this time someone's trying to do a landgrab on community based learning. The fact that it is laughable is what's so worrying - being blatantly stupid is no guarantee against something being accepted. I want to get these potential patents in now, so if anyone does try and patent them I can claim prior exposure:

Gaming - any computer based system where the user manipulates a virtual character through a simulated world, according to rules determined by the system. The world is divided into different stages of levels which the user must demonstrate increased proficiency to gain access to. The user gains entertainment through the completion of the game.

Help systems - any computer based system that offers advice, tips or help to a user engaging with a piece of software or a computer based activity. The system is based around a knowledge base of queries and can offer just in time advice.

E-learning - any system that provides content and tools that facilitate a cognitive change in the user and promote learning.

Oh, that last one has been done already. These may seem ludicrous but software patents don't operate much beyond this level, and if they get to this stage we may as well forget any form of innovation. This is why I disagree with some of the open source response to the BB patent which is that it doesn't matter, because monolithic VLEs are crap anyway. That may, or may not, be true (in my succession model I argue that the monolithic VLEs have played an important colonization role), but even if it is, that isn't the point - if this patent succeeds then you can bet that someone will patent something you do care about, just because securing a software patent becomes part of the normal process.

If there wasn't big money involved then this practice would be reminiscent of playground behaviour. We used to use the term 'bagsy' to lay claim to something - s in "I bagsy I go in goal first" or "I bagsy the chair by the window." This was remarkably robust at settling disputes "No, I bagsied it." I can imagine educational software companies sitting around a table "I bagsy e-learning!" "Damn! Well then I bagsy resource based learning".

It may work in the playground but it's no way to run an industry.