David Scotson

Lock-in is a term from economics that is often used in relation to software. You can find a reasonably concise introduction to the term here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

(As a side note I generally check the Wikipedia whenever I'm looking for a starting point on a 'concept' that is new to me. It's an excellent resource)

To sure I'm being clear, I believe the review I linked to was talking about needing skilled (expensive) techies just to *run* Vista, rather than needing them in order to customise it and take advantage of its mooted flexibility. The reviewer then comments that the money would be better spent on customisation so that's really two separate topics.

However, to answer your question about a techy finding them equally easy, I don't know how you would go about customising Vista, but I'd guess Moodle is much easier as it's based on PHP and MySQL whereas Vista is a J2EE project, which have a bad reputation for horrendous complexity. But maybe someone with more experience will be able to comment.

Here's an interesting review for you:

http://lists.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0409&L=deos-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=8455

It's nice to see Moodle's success recognised, but despite sounding reasonably well informed about developments in e-learning, there were a couple of moments when you could tell the author(s) didn't quite 'get it' when it comes to open source:

the more prosaic part of the cheap and cheerful trend

Is Moodle's meteoric rise and fabulous community really prosaic? And while I do think that Moodle is both cheap and cheerful, I'll note for non-native English speakers that the phrase cheap and cheerful has slightly disparaging connotations, basically meaning that it's only acceptable because of its low cost.

In fact the author(s) seem to be suggesting that Moodle is simply a clone of existing proprietary VLEs.

that may start out as a poor brother to proprietary offerings, but gradually matches them in functionality.

Well, there is something to look forward to, Moodle gradually matching a proprietary VLE.

Also, if you Google the writers name the first result is his own, unusually forthcoming, webpage complete with photo, biography and email address (not to mention a discograpy of his compositions).

Having said that, I feel a few of the responses here are having a slight sense of humour failure. It is a mildly amusing piece that deals with the often overlooked social aspects of introducing new technology in organizations and also manages to raise the increasingly important issue of privacy in the digital age. Not bad for an 'artist' and only to be applauded in my opinion.