Blackmoor Vituperative

This is a good open source story with a happy ending. I haven’t read something that made me feel this good in weeks.

The 160 first-year medical students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine used to receive a boatload of printed course materials during their first weeks in school%u2014four cases’ worth of paper per student, in fact.

Printing costs were sky-high. So it wasn’t surprising when state budgetary officers zeroed in on printed course materials as a prime opportunity to slash.

But with printed materials no longer available, pressure was mounting on the electronic version of course materials, available on the SOM’s intranet site. After pondering upgrading the course materials via a commercially available application, the SOM’s Office of Information Systems decided to go with an open version of course management software, implemented by Cignex, a systems integrator specializing in open source and based in Santa Clara, Calif. Cignex would prove critical in helping SOM select an open application that would prove a scalable platform for future growth.

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(from eWeek, College Taps Open-Source App to Solve Costly Paper Chase)