Moodle is a good LMS with which has grown over the years and offers a host of functionality and features that are very useful to have in an LMS. Add to it the fact that its open source which makes it free to use, has made it very popular.
Moodle has been able to sustain itself and keep evolving through its community, resulting in its emergence as a good option for anyone wanting to use an LMS. But is Moodle or any other open source LMS (there are a few good ones like the ones mentioned here) really free? Though they may be free at a tangible expense level, they do carry a cost which the organization implementing the LMS should be aware and careful of.
The cost is not only in terms of money spent on various components of procuring, managing and supporting the element but there could be other costs which can be quite detrimental.
So what is a real cost of a free (open source) LMS? To understand let’s find the elements that have a cost associated with them.
Thumb rule – For any open source LMS only the license cost is zero. That’s the only thing that’s free. Nothing else!
There are three ways in which you can use an open source LMS:
- Go to a vendor who has rebranded, modified the open source LMS as its own and provides managed hosting services on that or also deploys behind the firewall. This works almost like a commercial LMS arrangement – prices may vary. LMS is not free in this case.
- Go to a vendor who offers managed hosting services on the open source LMS without a rebranding. The vendor has skills to customize and maintain the LMS. In this case as well the LMS is not really free and turns out again like a commercial LMS.
In fact, in both the cases the cost of customizing might be high – not only development hours put in; but also from the fact that the vendors may not want to do that in first place. Or the maintenance cost would shoot up as the vendors offering open source LMS might prefer to keep the variance in different versions they offer to customers to a minimum.
So if you are looking to customize the LMS to a significant extent, be aware of both ongoing development costs and maintenance costs before making an investment. Otherwise it isn’t any different from going for a commercial LMS. In fact the system might even be constrained by the vendor’s open source LMS development skills, as not all the vendors offering the LMS have the required skills to dig deep in the system and customize it. To me, it seems most of the vendors are offering the open source LMS because it is quick to deploy and they don’t need a lot of technical skills to offer it. It would help to read my other post – the right way to go about open source LMS - Deploy the open source LMS at your organization involving your IT team for deployment, and also ongoing maintenance. Well this seems free. But is it? Here is why it is not and it has an added cost – the cost of eLearning initiative going awry in the start itself. Most often an open source LMS is the first choice when an organization is just starting eLearning. As most would like to keep the costs low, but you also need to keep an eye on the end value/result (not only in terms of LMS features but also the entire experience to the user) delivered to the real LMS users.
- The involvement of IT team doesn’t stop at installation and configuration. In fact that’s just the beginning. And what started as a low involvement project suddenly turns a support nightmare for the IT team, who may not be prepared and even geared up for handling this. As a result they may not be able to allocate enough, skilled resources or if they do then you can imagine the cost to the company for such resources. Pretty soon you will be answering questions about spending so much on IT for an open source LMS. It is not that the open source LMS needs more support – No. It’s the fact that we mostly ignore this cost element that we are caught off the guard on this.
- Infrastructure costs will exist as depending on the user base size the appropriate hardware and infrastructure would be needed. This may not be an additional cost compared to your initial estimates but it’s a cost anyway.
- Who will customize even the basic features? If IT doesn’t have the skills (mostly PHP and MySQL and of course a good understanding of the LMS code) you either outsource that part or hire additional staff to do the same. In both cases it is not free. An open source LMS doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to work on at code level. It’s easy for a high level skilled resource but then the resource is not going to be free.
- Assuming you acquired the skills by either outsourcing or through internal resources who will manage that resource (or team)? Not your IT team! Even if the IT team does you’d still need to manage by providing detailed directions on what to do, etc. It might prove to be a drain on your own time. The cost of spending your time on such an activity is extremely high as it affects various other things you may not be able to look after which are a part of your job. Remember that having got an open source LMS everyone assumes that it is not a big deal to manage it. You may have a hard time to explain what’s happening and even if you provide the right explanations, it may backfire on you.
- Ongoing support, enhancement and maintenance. Either internal or hired resources would do this but not without a cost. Depending on your user base size this cost could be a small one or could end up being significant. Technical Support also requires the resources to be trained on the LMS which either would take time if done on own or cost real money if external parties are involved.
- General Open Source LMS support. Once you customize your version of the LMS it, more often than not, is the case that it becomes unfriendly to the upgrades to the original open source LMS versions. Again, it may take really skilled programming team to code everything in a manner which would still keep it open to upgrade – however there is no guarantee and the upgrade implementation could also take time and resources to achieve. Otherwise you may get stuck with the version and may have to do your own upgrades internally (or through outsourced team). In either case it’s not going to be a free. Additionally, there are the hassles of product management, versioning, transitioning, data migration (if needed), etc.
- Effect on the eLearning initiative. While all the costs mentioned above can still be managed by loosening the purse-strings and spending time and energy on the above activities, however an attempt to control these costs because we were not prepared for them in the start might result in a sub-standard offering to the end users (in terms of features, etc.). Since this would be the initial stage of eLearning initiative a disinterested user base will not help carry the initiative forward. This is the real cost which you would have to deal with and is has the potential to be a serious concern. From a company’s perspective even after spending so much in time, money and energy if the initiative has not worked out well it’s a real cost and a huge one. Not only will it take a long time to gain the users interest back; but it might possibly take longer to get management backing you again.
Most of these costs surprise us because of our presumption that an open source LMS is free. As you can make out by now, it absolutely is not free at all. The only thing that may be free is its license cost but then the other costs are very real and if you aren’t prepared for these, it could lead to unwanted scenarios.
I hope this helps giving you some points to chew on when considering an open source LMS. No harm in going for one but dive-in with full gear on. Never get caught unarmed! Happy learning!
May 7th, 2010 at 2:27 am
[...] Post inspirado no artigo “The real cost of a Free (Open Source) LMS!“ [...]
May 8th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
[...] in mind that UpsideLearning wants to sell you their own LMS, Amit Gautam’s post on “The Real Cost of a Free (Open Source) LMS!” raises some important concerns that you need to weigh before you jump headlong into Moodle or other [...]
February 10th, 2011 at 8:39 pm
ALL of the points raised here apply to **ANY** LMS selected, both Open Source or Commercial – support costs, infrastructure costs, training and customization. It requires effort and money, which has to be spent regardless. Because a vendor is commercial does not make him/her more willing to do customizations for you – there will still be a cost – and since the pool of available talent is much smaller (how many firms will have access to that code, if required, to customize the software for you) then of course, by the laws of demand and supply, your costs WILL be much higher.
Training costs, “commercial support” costs are both relevant and real costs regardless of software distribution model.
The article should be called “The Real Cost of a LMS” and remove the references to Open Source beyond the mention of “cost of license”, because everything else mentions is not specific to Open Source, and therefore is misleading, and seems to be deliberately painting a very dismal picture of OS LMS. The only good thing mentioned about OS LMS is the free license as though that is the only positive trait. The benefits of Open Source go far beyond price, and it is apparent that the author does not really understand this fact. Flexibility, lack of vendor lock-in, customizability and product longevity (the code can never be taken away) are some of the attractions of OS software, which for many, far outstrip price (free license) in importance. Hence, the success of “Commercial Open Source” which negates the free argument.
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February 10th, 2011 at 9:18 pm
@George
Thanks for your comment. What you say is correct.
However, my article was purely focused on helping organizations understand that ‘an open source LMS is NOT free’. It was intended to clearly list out the costs involved in implementing an LMS even if its open source. It doesnt negate these costs being associated with any other LMS as well.
However, during my interactions with a number of people, I did observe that a good number of people associate ‘open source’ with ‘free’ which is not the case. As you said only the license cost is not there rest all other costs are applicable.
And this is precisely, I wanted to say in my article that only the licensing cost doesnt apply but there are other costs too. This would help understand the ‘real cost of an open source LMS’.
Thanks.
April 7th, 2011 at 11:41 pm
If you get a free car, you have to pay for gas.
If you get a free dog, you have to pay for dogfood.
If you get a free house, you still have power, water, and property taxes.
These things are still free, as is Moodle;-).
May 11th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
First of all, you don’t know what free in Free Software/Open Source Software means. Free in Free Software/Open Source Software means free as in “free speech and not as in free beer”.
The fact that you don’t give money for the software, is a bonus, because the main advantage of Free Software/Open Source Software is that you have the freedom to share, to study and to modify it.
With Free Software/Open Source Software you don’t depend on a company.
You can’t say the Moodle’s license is free because there is no license. You know why? Because when you get Moodle, the software is yours.
And you can’t have this in proprietary software: when you give money for proprietary software, you are not buying the software. You are buying a license to use the software for a period of time. The software is not yours, you can not change it to adapt it to yours needs, you can not add functionalities.
In life, you have two options: you pay for someone to do something or, if you don’t have money, you learn how to do it yourself. Free Software/Open Source Software gives you the both options, proprietary software doesn’t.
I’m not a computer science expert, I came from Humanities, but I can install and maintain Moodle on a server. And when I had some questions, I found a very good support from the community.
May 12th, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Totally agree with George and Paula. Â The great thing about open source is it is free (free both in terms of cost, and in terms of what you can do with it). Â Plus, if it is an established project then the chances are you can modify and still update to the latest version (have a look at Wordpress).
Also, at institutions that already have a VLE (even one of the really expensive ones that supposedly has dedicated support) there will still be a big team of IT guys, and associated infrastructure, supporting the system, hence, all those costs are already in place.
May 13th, 2011 at 9:32 am
Paula, the precise reason that ‘free’ in open source has not much to do with the cost of ownership is what I have tried to address in my post. What we have seen with our interactions with companies looking for an LMS is that when it comes to open source LMS systems – customers overlook the real ‘free’ part of the open source system and ‘assume’ that there is no cost of ownership as well.
I wanted to dispel this notion and iterate clearly the various (tangible and intangible) cost heads that come in play when acquiring or using an open source LMS. I’d like my customers to understand this clearly and make an informed decision and not get carried away by claims about open source software being free (even implying commercial costs to be zero). I find those claims almost like below the belt advertisements which fail to educate customers on the real benefits of the open source and harp on making it seem like completely ‘free’ for an organization. We have also seen customers review their decisions in a short time after realizing they are actually spending more money than they even knew they would have to.
Cheers!
May 13th, 2011 at 9:35 am
Nick, you have made some great points and I think its important for customers to evaluate and understand their strengths in these areas – source code modifications, having a team that can connect to community support, IT staff, etc. to get the maximum benefits of an open source system.
July 29th, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Hi Amit,
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I found your article quite interesting and informative. My company is an existing client of yours (Marshall ACM). Â I have personally used and deployed Moodle and am a specialist in Moodle implementation (and design- theme and php coder). I suppose the challenge from my side would be the cost in the server and infrastructure. This of course is avoided is a company already has this in place (most mid size to large) Organisations already have this in place.
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All in all, to use free open source technology requires skills and expertise which normal IT Staff don’t have (I would know this because my background is IT Support and then I dived into the world of Moodle and have become a specialist in this)
All in all I agree that the cost involved in infrastructure and setting/upgrading it is a considering point.
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Amit, I am quite interested in why Upside uses “JSP” Â technology instead of “PHP” – which I feel is more popular in the market. I only knew this after looking at upside portal web address and the error messages (that suggest that it runs on Tomcat – which is free)…
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August 4th, 2011 at 11:10 am
Hi Vijay,
I agree with the comments you have posted reg open source. Yes, as you put it and I have tried to address – the key areas to factor in are skills (PHP and Moodle knowledge), ability to manage a programming team, clear understanding of the hosting and infrastructure costs, and a helpdesk. Â As long as customers understand that all these are costs, I am sure that they can take a informed decision.
Regarding JSP (or rather we use Advanced Java), when we started developing UpsideLMS more than 6 years ago Java was a preferred enterprise development platform for designing and developing enterprise scale applications. PHP was getting popular and .NET was also getting its feet in the ground. We, however decided to go with Java as we had more confidence in the platform and also more skills and knowledge at that point of time. But yes, PHP has really come up well and is a strong contender today to both Java and .NET for developing big applications.
September 20th, 2011 at 6:24 pm
Hi Amit,
I work in a company where we work in developing LMS etc in PHP.the real advantage of PHP compared to .NET and java is that it is easier to train entry level programmers in PHP and bug fixing and customization is easy in PHP
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