OSS and open source software

EDUCAUSE has posted a new Patents resource page. The page features resources such as information about copyright lobby groups, government policy surrounding open source software, and working with patents in the higher education arena.

...Or so says the grapevine. I've just heard via John Norman, Director of CARET and Chair of the Sakai Board, that the patent claim filed by Blackboard (#6,988,138: Alcorn et al, Internet-based education support system and methods) has been rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

[Update 26/01/07: Apologies to John, who I've misquoted here. He confirms the patent has not been rejected, but the USPTO has accepted the SFLC request for a reexam. See my subsequent post for further details].

This weekend, I was in Manchester for the second workshop of the Live Sociology research methods course. I met Jen Patashnick from the VIA Project, who travelled over from Boston to give a talk about her experience using video-based research methods.

VIA is a fascinating research project based at Boston Children's Hospital. Founded by Dr Michael Rich, the project uses digital video and a participative research design to investigate patients' experiences of living with chronic illness. Jen has been working on VIA for eight years now, and has overseen the transformation of its analytic methods from using paper-based forms, through to computer-assisted qualitative analysis using Visual Basic macros and NVivo, through to using the open-source software Transana.

CARET has also used Transana for video-based education research projects, so I was really interested to hear from Jen how the VIA project has evolved its particular methodology over time. We agreed that one of the main benefits of using OSS is the possibility for direct dialogue with developers.