Any experience with Easy Campus?

Any experience with Easy Campus?

by Peter Seaman -
Number of replies: 10

I'm currently working with a client who uses an LMS called Easy Campus, owned by a company called Educadium.

Easy Campus (or at least the part that I have used) looks and behaves exactly like Moodle. It appears as though someone has taken the Moodle code and rebranded it (probably after some modification). Does anyone know about the legal niceties of doing this? Can anyone just take the Moodle code and use it for profit, as long as they don't use the Moodle name and brand? Beyond questions of legality I see ethical questions, perhaps. I thought the whole point of OS software was to use it, improve it, and give the improvements back to the community, in a virtuous circle.

Anyway, I'd appreciate hearing some perspective from anyone who has any - and who won't flame me (rather too much of that on this forum lately).  wink

Thanks.

Peter (my real name!)

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In reply to Peter Seaman

Re: Any experience with Easy Campus?

by Colin Fraser -
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Hi Peter, two things, if you think you are being flamed, have a private discussion with Community Manager, Helen Foster, this is not the sort of thing that we encourage. Disagree, certainly, discuss and argue, for sure, but flaming is not a part of the culture here, and should never be.

The other is if you are uncomfortable with something that looks and feels too much like Moodle but does not proudly wear a Moodle badge, then turn the URL over to moodle.org, so that it can be looked at. Given that similar projects with similar goals are going to have to face the same programming hurdles they will reach similar conclusions, so it may be that they have developed similar processes independently. But maybe not. (This is the question facing Apple and Samsung at the moment, and as Apple's case has been kicked out of most courts around the world, it was not unreasonable expect the constant appeals to nationalism being made by Apple, and Samsung being Korean, will force economic justice into the back seat - not to mention the ramification that the decision has on US patent laws. After the debacle of the Frazier Lens cases and a couple of others, US Patent law is now being viewed with less enthusiasm than it was.) This is for the experts to figure out, not us anyway.

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In reply to Peter Seaman

Re: Any experience with Easy Campus?

by Derek Chirnside -

Peter, this definitely is Moodle, the help is very extensive in the mothership website, and it is obvious it is 1.9.  Well packaged, they have certainly picked the things I'd look for in an LMS and seem to have made their pitch around this.  Colin is right.  If you have any further questions, especially stuff arising around your client relationship, e-mail Helen.  She will know what to do.

Go well.

Derek. (My real name)

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Any experience with Easy Campus?

by Peter Seaman -

Thanks to everyone who commented on this thread so far. I just wanted to tie up any loose threads remaining.

There was a lingering question about the legality or ethicality (is that a word??) of taking the Moodle code, adapting it, and re-selling it for a profit. Seems as though Martin put that issue to rest in the thread about Moodle hosting, when he wrote:

"anyone is free to make money from Moodle and NOT contribute any to Moodle development - thousands of people around the world do so..."

That's a very generous view. Yet I wonder about the idea of taking and not giving back. Seems to me that if everyone did this, there would be no virtuous projects like Moodle. In fact, isn't this the exact scenario that many for-profit businesses fear most? ("I invest time and money to create something, and then someone just takes it, does it better, and puts me out of business"). Clearly Martin doesn't fear that will happen, but I still wonder if it's ethical to advise a client to use a product that is making a profit from Moodle and not giving back to the project.

One other lingering question for me is about the relative value of picking a Moodle derivative instead of the genuine article. Here's a claim from Easy Campus's web page:

"In minutes, you can set up your online school and create an online course that looks professional and that meets the most stringent learning requirements. It’s safer and more convenient than free alternatives like Moodle and far cheaper than commercial LMS software like Blackboard." [italics added for emphasis]

Convenience is in the eye of the beholder, surely. But "safer"? Elsewhere the site talks about monitoring a site for any signs of foul play, so perhaps that's how they think their platform is more secure.  Anyway, I'd be grateful for any insight people could offer into these issues. Thanks.

Peter

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In reply to Peter Seaman

Re: Any experience with Easy Campus?

by Colin Fraser -
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"...but I still wonder if it's ethical to advise a client to use a product that is making a profit from Moodle and not giving back to the project..."

Ethics and modern business practice do not look to be a good fit, Peter. Adam Smith would be spinning in his grave if he knew what we have done with his simple scheme for the "common weal". Many of us are aware, even vaguely, of "Wealth of Nations", but few have even heard of "Theory of Moral Sentiments". Even if we have, it is unlikely, in the modern context, that anyone would bother to make the connections Smith did. If you really look at what he wrote, and then look at how Smith led his life, you would see that what he was doing was applying the idea of "From each according to his ability. To each according to his need." Smith really did create huge wealth, but did not die a wealthy man, he gave much of it away as he made it. In many ways, is this not what Martin is also doing?  I would describe it as "good capitalist practice". So this can make what others do "not good capitalist practice"? Intellectual dishonesty? Unethical treatment of someone else's intellectual breakthroughs? All of the above?

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In reply to Peter Seaman

Re: Any experience with Easy Campus?

by Waithaka Ngigi -

Hello, 

The way GPL license  works, you can take the Moodle code (GPL licensed) and change it anyway you like, call it anything you want, as long as you also provide the changes you made to anyone using your new software.

This does not mean you have to contribute back to Moodle, it only means that you provide your changed / modified software to your users/clients, under the same license.

The only other issue that comes to light is whether you can call the new software that you have changed, Moodle. Copyright, such as followed by Redhat, does not allow you to call any software based on Redhat, that you then modify and resell, Redhat.

Hope this helps.

Waithaka Ngigi

Academia.A1.iO

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In reply to Waithaka Ngigi

Re: Any experience with Easy Campus?

by Colin Fraser -
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I don't think anyone is disputing that, Waithaka, and you are quite right, you can onsell your changes, but I do not think that it means that anyone can copy anything under a GPL, tart it up a bit, rebadge it and sell it as a new product without identifying where the source code came from. Even Microsoft got into trouble over that one, I understand. 

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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Any experience with Easy Campus?

by Waithaka Ngigi -

Colin,

As it is, you can doexactly that. Infact, thats whats encouraged, coz u might tart it up and call it a similiar name to original product, and ride of the name of the original product.

Say I changed Moodle with a new skin, then I call it Moodle Extreme, problems is, I am riding off the name of Moodle in the first place. But, if I call it NewLMS, then I would have to market the whole thing from scratch.

Something else, if you host your software as SaaS, then you not literally providing the software, you don't need to even handover the changed code to your clients, at least in GPL V2.

Regards

Waithaka

Academia.A1.iO

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In reply to Waithaka Ngigi

Re: Any experience with Easy Campus?

by Colin Fraser -
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Waithaka, basically I do not design or write code anymore, never used PHP anyway, so I cannot be bothered keeping up with it. The bottom line is going to be if a product is challenged for not abiding by the terms of the GPL, any version, then you can seriously expect the product will be closely examined. If it is breaching the agreements, then it will get pulled. The only question will be what standards to apply when making an assessment.

On a much different note, if the European courts toss the Apple/Samsung case out, then the administration of US Patent law is severely damaged. How can anyone trust those laws if it is clearly percieved that a foriegn litigant is not going to receive a fair hearing in the US under their legal system? So the enforcement of the GnuGPL is going to be seriously enhanced or will be equally threatened. The reality is that the generic makeup of code and essentially common practices of coders is going to make proving violations difficult. 

Bottom line is, and this is really as far as I want to go with this, you can copy, you can onsell, but you must acknowledge the source and you can only charge for your variations. If you are using as SaaS, then you cannot rebadge - the intellectual property rights are not yours. Passing off is a breach of copyright.

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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Any experience with Easy Campus?

by Marcus Green -
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I'm not sure you are correct on this Colin. The ability to modify GPL code and then use it for selling Software as a Service is the model behind many major corporations (IBM, Google etc).  There is no  general GPL licencing requirement to identify the licence details or release the source code when software is used to dish up web pages. 

This article from 2007 reflects on this issues

http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/07/the-gpl-and-software-as-a-serv.html

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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Any experience with Easy Campus?

by Colin Fraser -
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You may be right Marcus, but the practice would strike me as being unethical if you were to not acknowledge the source. Perhaps we need to rethink a lot of things in light of the leaps and bounds technology moves ahead and the slow, ponderous, monolithic movement of our laws, you think? 

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