It's amazing, the opportunities a disruptive technology can offer to those who take the time to learn it. If you know your Moodle, there are more than 100 jobs available, right now, today -- and for some of them, you don't even need to change out of your pajamas.
It's also a great lesson about the different business models that open source can create. Red Hat has built a very successful publicly traded company selling service subscriptions to open source software product. Other companies, like Acquia, have created profitable consulting and services businesses.
Here we see the extreme other end of the spectrum: a technology that has become widely deployed, globally distributed, and highly localized -- thus, ideal for a worldwide marketplace for individual service providers. The job site at moodle.org lists positions from Silicon Valley to London, from Idaho to Kuala Lumpur. Full-time, part-time, telecommute. All offered within the past several months.
Looking at some of the job descriptions gives immediate insights into why open source is so useful. Many of these job offers are for very specific modifications to Moodle. One can't help but wonder how effective Moodle is, as a community, in reintegrating these kinds of efforts -- but one thing is for certain: they've got a way better shot at it than Blackboard does.
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