Introduction - michael feldstein

I want to welcome Michael Feldstein and thank him for agreeing to contribute to the Impact of Open Source Software and Open Educational Resources on Education series on Terra Incognita. His post is scheduled to appear on October 31, 2007 (eastern U.S.). Michael will be writing about how open source projects work from an economic perspective. Drawing on the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase and Harvard economics professor Yochai Benkler, he will provide some perspective on how open source projects manage to defy conventional wisdom about economics and self-interested behavior, and gives some questions that universities can ask when considering whether a particular open source software project is likely to be successful.

Michael was a very early participant in Open Source Learning Management Systems projects, having been one of the early participants (and the only non-technologist participant at the time) of the OpenACS community in early 2000—the community that would eventually spawn the GPL-licensed dotLRN Learning Management System.

I am very much looking forward to Michael’s posting, which promises to strike at a core theme and build on the great dialog that was generated during the past months on the Series. Please feel free to comment, ask questions, build on the conversation, and enjoy.