LAMP Consortium joins Apereo Foundation to grow support for open source in .edu

  1. Home
  2. LAMP Consortium joins Apereo Foundation to grow support for open source in .edu

Princeton, New Jersey— November 2nd, 2017 The LAMP consortium, a community of eighteen colleges, have announced their membership of the Apereo Foundation, the leading non-profit entity supporting the development and adoption of open source software in education.

“Apereo and LAMP share a common objective of supporting and sustaining cost-effective innovation in higher education with open source software” said Ian Dolphin, Executive Director of the Apereo Foundation, “it makes profoundly good sense to work together where we can. LAMP has demonstrated the benefit of open source software for smaller institutions. That’s a model we believe we can expand”.

Martin Ramsay, Managing Director LAMP, added “LAMP deploys Apereo Foundation software such as Sakai from a single instance for all our members. Our members share good practice and learn from each other for the common good. Participation in Apereo will increase opportunities for collaboration, and help support software we rely on”.

LAMP has been using Sakai since 2006. In 2008 it won the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award for Technology Collaboration. The award committee noted that “LAMP has shown the higher education community that it is possible for institutions having limited resources to install, operate, and sustain even the most sophisticated software, provided that they work together to meet their common challenges”. Ramsay agreed. “Joining the Apereo Foundation as a full members is a logical step for us. We’ve already proven our member colleges can collaborate in a meaningful and financially sustainable way. Joining Apereo allows us to join a global collaboration with over 180 schools  and commercial partners worldwide.”

LAMP and Apereo will explore holding joint events in North America, with a particular focus on technology supported teaching and learning. The two organizations will work more closely around specific projects, such as Sakai and the Karuta eportfolio solution, and generally work to improve community coordination, information flow and dialog.