I hate to say it, but I feel like I am just “getting” the open source community … I’ve known its there, but I’ve never really taken the time to look at all it really has to offer. That all changed this week when I set out to create a new domain for another project … I didn’t want to set up a standard site for it. I wanted it to be a standards-oriented open source blog space. I’ve been looking at several things, but I settled on WordPress. It is a great toolset.

The thing that really amazes me is that it is free — free to download, free to use, free to use for other reasons, free to make money on, free to base new products on, just flat out free. And it just works … I mean I was able to make it work in a bout five minutes … mySQL, PHP, and everything! It took me another day to get it all looking close to what I wanted, but still easy. I am beginning to see a powerful opportunity here … I know I am late to the party.

When I stopped to think about it, this software could easily be the basis to a whole new toolset. The new hosting company I went with has a whole suite of open source tools that can be installed and running with just a couple clicks from a somewhat easy to use central interface. Really eye opening … there isn’t anything like it in higher ed — competition makes a huge difference. I am going to see what it would take to turn several open source tools into a great product … At any rate, I think I am about 70% to a solution to something I’ve been trying to figure out for years … and its all free.