Thanks for sharing this. I wholeheartedly agree with your last sentence!

I like the look of the Ingots by the way…

Kind regards,

Hans

Cheers
Göran

I think we are talking a bit at cross purposes here. I do not equate proprietary – open source with commercial – non-commercial. I mean, we all have to eat! Making money with software is fine. Using a closed license (or no license) for your software product is also fine. What is more important to me is the gratis versus libre distinction.

I am sure it is possible to give your customers some of the advantages of open source without an open source license. However your customers do not get many of the other advantages of open source: freedom number 2 and 3 from the four freedoms, vendor independence, the possibility of forking the software in case something happens to the vendor (congratulations to Fronter for being bought by Pearson by the way!) and more.

To me these things define open source. Maybe I am too principled in this case, but according to the definition of open source Fronter’s license is not on the list of open source licenses. Thus, in this case it is black and white: they should remove the misleading texts from their brochures.

I like your emphasis on the didactical model offered by the tools. If Fronter is as deserving of credit as you say, then they really don’t need this false advertising. Wouldn’t you agree?

Finally a link to two related blog posts. First, an earlier discussion between Miles Berry and Roger Larsen about the same topic. Second, a blog post from Jef van den Hurk which references the discussion here. Jef is right in saying that I do not talk about the quality of the product itself. I didn’t think that would have been fair because I really don’t know the product. It was their marketing practices that really ticked me off and which I wanted to address!

Kind regards,

Hans

Even geleden zette ik mijn boodschappenlijstje voor Online Educa op mijn weblog. Na afloop moest ik natuurlijk wel even kijken of ik aan mijn trekken was gekomen. Eén van de ingerediënten betrof ‘killer-apps’, nieuwe toepassingen die het aanzien va…

Fronter has a lot of the advantages of Open Source although it is admittedly (by Roger) not for free, such as the way it is being developed, the underlying platform, the way customers have influence on the product and many other things. For the money the customers pay they get a local support organization and service level agreements for the software and hosting by the vendor itself which is not to be underestimated from a customer perspective.

As you mention the most important thing is more the didactal model offered by the tool(s) which is very European and based on collaborative leraning (social constructivism) and close to recently developed Web 2.0 ideas.

From my perspective Fronter deserves some more credit and interest. It is a good and fair alternative for the education market compared to its competitors. Again, i’m not affiliated in any way to the Fronter organization.

Let me start by saying that I do not have any issues with Fronter as a product. I haven’t had a chance to really look at the software, but when I read the non “open” parts of their marketing materials it seems to be a conceptually interesting product delivered at a good pricepoint.

I guess where we differ in opinion is what we consider to be misleading. I would consider the image of the roses in the post to be misleading even though there is no factually untrue information. Roger Larsen of Fronter was presented at the Educa keynote as the “CEO of Europe’s largest open source e-learning platform”. If you decide to look at the statement literally it isn’t misinformation, if you look at the intention of the statement, I would really consider it less than ethical.

I am really curious to know: In what way does Fronter “provide many of the advantages of open source”?

Maybe the all statements about the Fronter Open Platform are factually true, but not all statements about “traditional open source” are true. The sentence: “In contrast to traditional open source products, Fronter offers tight service level agreements, quality control and a zero-bug regime.” is what we would call in Dutch “sfeermakerij” and in English probably FUD.

I look forward to continuing this discussion at some point in the future and you are always more than welcome to comment on this blog.

Kind regards,

Hans

You post is challenging for the Fronter people. I remember being at a customer site and looking at some marketing material. The customer was interested in buying Fronter because it was Open. BTW they heart the info on the last OEB. I had to do some research on a new system. So Fronter was on my list.

I couldn’t understand the Open statements. So I decided to call Fronter to clear up some issues. It was a kind of unrealistic phone call. Like a Monty Python sketch. *exit Fronter, new entry on the list*.

Doing business starts with trust. Not with misleading information.

Best regards, stay alert and keep us informed.

Marcel

Thanks for your comment! The director Fronter was allowed to do a little keynote speech this morning. Fronter was literally announced as “The largest European Open Source e-Learning Platform”. That is when I left

Kind regards,

Hans