The Cartridge Standard: Common, but how Open?

Defining industry-wide standards is usually good news - if they are open, that is. So when I heard abou the Common Cartridge Standard for digital educational content, my immediate thought was: is it open? It's hard to tell from the press release:

The IMS Global Learning Consortium announced today that a new standard for digital educational content and e-Learning systems will soon be available in products in the marketplace. Digital educational content, learning management systems, and learning software tools incorporating the new Common Cartridge interoperability standard will be available from some IMS members as early as the Spring of 2007. Demonstrated in June of 2006 by IMS Contributing Members ANGEL Learning, Blackboard Inc, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson Education, and the University of Michigan (the Sakai Project), the specifications will soon be released to the IMS Developers Network.

So the standard will be "released to the IMS Developers Network": but what does that mean? The only thing that gives me hope is the fact that alongside all the usual fat cats of educational content, there are two open source projects: Sakai and Moodle. Given their presence I can only presume it's all above board and open. I hope. (Via Open Access News.)

Of Sakai and Moodle

Sakai may not be a name that is known to many in the world of free software, but it's one of the leading open source projects in the field of education. IBM has certainly heard of it, having just donated a goodly lump of code to the project. And if Sakai proves of interest, you probably ought to check out Moodle, too.