In summary, a resounding Yes! Not only does open source help deliver an economically sustainable ICT investment pathway, but it enables a far more innovative environment for delivering educational outcomes.

TF: Do you have links with other such organisations?

RW: I wouldn't describe Eduforge as an organisation as such. It’s simply an open access toolkit of resources to support communities of interest. In that sense, it’s only as strong or as useful as those participating and contributing to the community.

Registered users will have links to all sorts of organisations.

TF: Can you suggest 3 strengths/benefits of the service?

RW: Strengths can also be perceived as weaknesses. Our key challenge is that there’s a lot of functionality to support projects at all levels. There’s blogs, wikis, document management, CVS or Subversion, Tracking, project management Tools, forums, file management etc. While this set of tools can be highly useful it can also be a little daunting to people who aren't familiar with all of the tools. That said, you can simply select which tools you want in your project space. So, one strength is the range of functionality.

The real strength though lies with the community members that contribute to Eduforge and use the site for their projects. There’s a lot of innovation going on.

A third strength I believe is the fact that we're not organisationally aligned. It’s open access to anyone with an interest in education.

TF: Can you suggest 3 weaknesses of the service?

RW: There’s always work to do to build up resources and improve the tools. For example we recently replaced the journal system with a fully featured blogging system. Also, the List Serv was quite clunky so instead we've further developed the forum tool so that you can reply to an email straight to the forum without logging on.

Wiki functionality is fast developing. I think we can improve our current wiki system based on PHP Wiki.

In the end though, the community is as strong as its members. I'd like people reading the interview to have a look around Eduforge -- where they see areas that need building up perhaps either let us know or help out.

TF: How is the service financed?