[jrells]

As much as I would love for educational institutions (and government in general) to fund open source projects to solve their needs, that doesn't seem very realistic right now. Maybe when startup culture becomes the norm. The people who make decisions about technology purchases in education are, in my experience, non-technical and highly risk averse. They pay absurd prices for outdated software. There is little pressure to create a better product. I have to use Moodle for my teaching, and I'm sure anything Google creates will be far superior. This was at the top of my startup ideas list, but I'm glad someone is working on it.

[gerbal]

The problem with open source software in academia and education is the price. The cost of hiring a developer to maintain and support a piece of software is more often than not far more than the cost of a software license from a company that provides decent quality support and customer service.