Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by Daniel Neis Araujo -
Number of replies: 13
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Hello , Dear Community

I would like to draw everyone's attention to a problematic movement in our community (alongside many others in the Brazil ) .

Moodle Partners program has jeopardized the future of free education in our country .

This advertising program is concentrating solutions based on Moodle in the hands of private companies and educational holdings millionaires who just take advantage of the work of the community and feature proprietary solutions disguised as " software as a service" ( SaaS ) with no return to the community , not attending the annual meetings ignoring all invitations .

This type of advertising and partnership has endangered any initiative of professionals and nonprofit groups , this program is a threat to free market competition .

Advertising is something that influences the " curious " and " ignorant " . The way Moodle Partners program emphasizes these big companies goes against the principles of free software and promoting the monetization of education , taking advantage of what is open to empower those who already holds .

We do not need money , we need dedication and love . Moodle needs to be again love the style of internet


ps : . This post was also published in English another forum:
Moodle Partners : https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=261304
and in Brazilian portuguese at out general discussion forum:
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=261303
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In reply to Daniel Neis Araujo

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by Guillermo Madero -

Hi Daniel,

Even if you acknowledge the fact, you shouldn't post about the same thing in several threads:

Post your question in one forum only.

Anyway, the requirement you are making is completely out of line (even if the same person rated it as useful in each and every post) and the so-called argument you used really doesn't scan. I won't get into this, but what you are asking is exactly what is a threat to free market competition. Paternalism is not the answer.

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In reply to Daniel Neis Araujo

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by Don Hinkelman -
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I am very concerned about this problem. If this is a concern shared by many educators in Brazil, then I suggest you organize yourselves and present the specific problems to Helen, Martin and others at Moodle HQ.  They will listen.

And to the partners, spend more time with your community of dedicated users (not just customers)--including the all the people who love Moodle.  Give more than you get--that is what many call "love".

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In reply to Daniel Neis Araujo

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by Martin Dougiamas -
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Daniel,

Our Moodle Partners are essential to the entire production of Moodle.  They are the ones paying for these http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Releases and most of this http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Roadmap and all the moodle.org sites ... if you don't understand that then you don't understand how Moodle is developed.

All people need houses and food, even when they are working on something out of love.  All software has a cost.  And people sometimes need services that no-one can give them for free.  A university is paying your salary for example.  (Clay conveniently ignores all this in the talk you posted.)

However, of course I always want Moodle Partners to provide useful services that people want, and to be good members of our global community.  If you have evidence of any problems at all then I would be very happy to know so I can do something about it.  Don't post about it on the forums though: please contact us direct at http://moodle.com with all information that you have.

Regards,
Martin

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In reply to Daniel Neis Araujo

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by Marcus Green -
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Congratulations on not needing money, however I find the shops where I buy my groceries expect payment with some sort of money.

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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by dawn alderson -

ummmm.....can I just add:

To be fair, Clay was making the point that some business models can be more sustainable than others, and that in comparing the corporate-led with that of a community-driven model he was highlighting how respectful and reciprocal relations can ensure the sustainability of software/services/access for all.

Well that is what I heard, to be very sure, and I quite liked the Shinto analogy too smile

Cheers,

Dawn 

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In reply to dawn alderson

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by Marcus Green -
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The original post gave me no reasons to watch the video.

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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by dawn alderson -

Hello Marcus,

I see where you are coming from, certainly in consideration of the title of the lead post here.

It is great, however, that we can all take what we wish from the same info to make sense of something.

I found Clay's presentation profound, accessible and to the point. 

Daniel, I think the use of that video presentation links nicely with your main point, in which you attempt to apply matters more widely.

On that note, thanks Daniel for posting.

Dawn

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In reply to dawn alderson

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by Daniel Neis Araujo -
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Hello, Everybody


thanks for taking the time to answer me, this is the kind of love i was talking about and all the reaction were just expected. =)

I am happy to see that some people got the point and I will try again to explain myself.

I would like very much not to need money, but in fact this is not the case and thanks to my work, Moodle has helped me to pay my bills for about 9 years now. This is because my first job was installing Moodle for my University, where now we have more than 40K students and teachers using Moodle every day.

I worked in various Moodle projects since 2005 and although none of my "bosses" asked me to give back to Moodle community, I have some contributions since i started. Some of these contributions are in code, some in translation, some in review, some are forum replies, some are talks at moodle moot brazil, some are kind of evangelism. To be honest, I consider it more "retribution" than "contribution".

After all this time participating with Moodle, I'm amazed to find that I have done all this illegally:
"You can't use "Moodle” to describe services around Moodle (such as hosting, training, support, consulting, course creation services, theme development, customisation, installation, integration and certification). This applies even if you do not charge for the services. Note that usually only Moodle Partners have this permission." (http://moodle.com/trademarks/)

This makes me ask myself: "Being a Moodle lover/contributor does not makes me a partner of Moodle eco-system as a whole?" It seems not to be thecase, because Moodle.com says clearly: "Generally we only want companies of significant size that are heavily focussed on providing quality Moodle services." 

Looking at the Moodle Partners Application form, I recognize several jobs I have done for several clients since 2005. I just don't have a support team (although i've trained some support groups before), don't have my own infrastructure (because i always let my clients decide where they will put their sites) and don't have Moodle as a Service (the new disguise for "closed source software"). May I apply for a partner certification being an Individual Micro Entrepreneur ?

Here at Brazil, MoodleRooms is allied to "Grupo A" , an educational holding that controls some publishing houses and other educational related companies. Some can see this as a good thing. I see this as restricting access to knowledge and information and as a way to reproduce the point of view of the group that has the media control. It is like television. It is diffusion, not communication.

I would like to compete with these industry and give back freedom to people, but i am afraid that Moodle don't want me to do so.


Kind regards,

Daniel

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In reply to Daniel Neis Araujo

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by dawn alderson -

Hello Daniel,

Nice that you have responded, but do remember Don's words in his post. And, Martin's contact details... http://moodle.com -in order to attempt to  square things...he cannot do anything with hearsay-none of us can. I wish you all the best for the future.

cheers,

Dawn 

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In reply to Daniel Neis Araujo

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by Tim Hunt -
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Moodle is GPL. This gives you a lot of freedom to use Moodle, and to help other people use it, even for money.

However, Moodle the word/brand is trademarked. You cannot use that name to advertise your commercial Moodle services unless you apply to be part of the Moodle partner program and are accepted. If you do, then you can use the trademark, in exchange for paying a royalty of 10% of all your income to Moodle HQ to fund the on-doing development of Moodle.

This is all explained on http://moodle.com/trademarks/. What I wrote above is just my paraphrase. Note that I have no official relationship to moodle.com. I can't speak for them. I am just trying to be helpful.

It may not be perfect, but it is better than many other open source business models.

It is possible to offer commercial services based around Moodle without being a Moodle partner. The example I know that handles this the best is LUNS http://www.luns.net.uk. They offer a range of e-Learning and Virtual Learning Environment services, and just mention in the small print that these services are built using Moodle.


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In reply to Daniel Neis Araujo

Re: Please, build a cooperative spirit with the Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by Don Hinkelman -
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Hi Daniel,

Thanks for explaining more details. It must feel frustrating to devote yourself to the Moodle community but have others criticize it.  I think you should contact Helen Foster and Martin Dougiamas directly and explain the problems you are having. They will help.  They have always helped us in Japan create a strong and active community with partners, administrators, teachers, researchers, and developers.

If you are promoting Moodle for free and training others for free, there is no problem.  Only when you start commercializing it, as Tim says, you need to apply to be a partner and give 10% to Moodle HQ.  Even if you are not accepted as a partner, you can still donate 10% of your fees to Moodle HQ in the spirit of supporting the global community. But Moodle partners and Moodle community members working for free can only use the trademark--see Moodle HQ for more on that. We really need Moodle partners because they fund almost everything in Moodle--donations are important but only a drop in the bucket.  So that is why I changed the word in this thread from "terminate" to "build a cooperative spirit".

If there others like you who are evangelizing for Moodle, form a not-for-profit association to hold conferences and help Moodle grow in Brazil.  In Japan, our Moodle Association raises funds for Moodle HQ, gives awards for best open courseware, funds proposals to create new plugins, and holds conferences and free workshops. Go to the Moodle Association of Japan website to see our constitution and financial reports.

Good luck and keep up the spirit!

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In reply to Daniel Neis Araujo

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by john Simpson -

Interesting. I'm sure education even in Brazil isn't free, as buildings need to be built, educational establishments need to be paid for, teachers need to be paid for their family living income. Of course like many other countries in the world, this is paid through taxes, to enable students to get this free education.

So, if the these educational establishments need professional assistance, why not give a little from this tax income for Moodle partners to do their necessary services for Moodle.

I'm sure that these fees are very small in comparison to the whole country,s "FREE" education budget.

For successful private educational establishments, I do believe that such establishments have a duty to donate generously for using Moodle, which in return such donations would be in their personal interest. That is the power of open source, included in the list Moodle, Linux, Ubuntu, Mint, PHP, apache, LibreOffice, Blender 3d, filezilla, Firefox, Gimp, etc, etc, etc

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In reply to john Simpson

Re: Please, terminate Moodle Partner Brazil Program

by Daniel Neis Araujo -
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Hello,


adding news since last discussions here ;)

Here at Brazil, a company used to organize Moodle Moot Brasil with a private university since 2007.

In 2010, they got to know the "Moodle Brasil" community at https://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=35

and the "facilitator", Gilvan Marques, and I were asked to put our names on the "organization group" of the event as "community members".

This event was not sustainable: it costs R$150,00 to participants (our base salary is below R$800),

they produced many bags and printed papers, have expensive "coffee-breaks" and so. The company and the university behind this event said they had a R$35K cost to the event, to host 200 people.


Last year, on second semester, the real community unite to make the event happen again, this time in Florianópolis, a city in Brazil's south region.


The Federal University of Santa Catarina, a public university, gave the space for free (the only condition was that the event was free for participants) and a lot of people came.

We had no bags, no coffeee  breaks. Everybody answered nicely and kindly to invitations to talk.

The event was a success, hosting 200 people and we got just R$2.5K from sponsors. Last day we got to the bar with all people and spent the R$300 that left from sponsors.


This year we will make the event again in Sao Paulo, on the same private University.

But now the event is "free for participants". The company that was behind it before is just one more sponsor, and the university gave the rooms for free. We got R$6K from sponsors this time and this will cover the organization costs with airplanes and hotels, make our website (www.moodlebrasil.org) live for many months in future and also we will buy an ssl certificate for the site.


Altough we have contacted all the Brazilian Moodle Partners, none was available to sponsor

nor even to participate. Some of them not even answered my emails.


The main point here is: you don't need to do everything just for money. I am not a professional "event organizer" or "community leader", I am a free software developer. I do this because i love it.The rest is a consequence.


Kind regards,

Daniel

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