“We think it’s a terrific time to be making investments in the leading brands behind providing Moodle services,” [Blackboard’s] Henderson told Inside Higher Ed on Monday. In a blog post, he called the growing popularity of open source “the most important new dimension shaping the LMS market today.”

Henderson acknowledged that some advocates might look upon Monday’s news as a corporate attempt to subvert the open-source movement. “Longtime participants in the open and community source communities may be concerned about our corporate intentions, and how we’ll conduct ourselves given that we are governed by an interest in business growth,” he said, adding that Moodlerooms’s current clientele may be anxious about what a Blackboard regime could portend. — Blackboard buys Moodlerooms, creates open-source division | Inside Higher Ed.