Moodle Drops Blackboard Partnership

Open source software company Moodle today announced it is ending its partnership with LMS giant Blackboard.

Blackboard will "transition out of Moodle's Certified Moodle Partner program in the coming months," and "will no longer be allowed to use the Moodlerooms name or the Moodle trademarks that had been licensed to them to advertise their Moodle-related services," according to a press release.

Blackboard has been a Moodle partner since 2012, when it acquired Moodlerooms and several other companies with Moodle licenses. But the relationship between Blackboard and its open source licensor has been complex: "Blackboard has always been a sensitive and sometimes confusing subject in the Moodle community, since Blackboard has of course continued to develop and sell its own competing products," said Martin Dougiamas, CEO and founder of Moodle, in a statement.

"While we thank Blackboard for being a solid contributor to the Moodle project during the past six years, the fact is that the proportion of our revenue coming from our partnership with Blackboard has been steadily declining every year since 2012," Dougiamas added. "Now is the right time to clarify the situation between us and focus more tightly on our exciting roadmap around our open software."

In a company statement, Blackboard stressed that it was committed to the ongoing development of its Moodle-based SaaS product. "Blackboard continues to support the largest number of clients using a Moodle-based SaaS product in the world. With the end of the partnership, there will be no change in Blackboard’s ability to utilize open source updates and enhancements produced by Moodle and the open-source community. Additionally, there will be no change in the current user experience for clients and no drop-off in Blackboard’s pace of innovation and development. The company will continue to contribute code and features back to the open-source community — and work to move the community forward together."

Consultant and longtime analyst of the LMS market Michael Feldstein gave a preliminary take on the breakup in a blog post: "For Moodle, there is good news and risk. Moodle will now have a chance to demonstrate that they can be sustainable without depending on Blackboard. The risk, of course, is that they will now have to demonstrate that they can be sustainable without depending on Blackboard."

As for Blackboard, he wrote, "It's bad news in the short term, but the impact is hard to quantify." Among the issues clouding the situation: questions of trademark, customer reactions, greater independence, and an unknown future for the Moodlerooms business, Feldstein said.

[Editor's note: This story has been updated to include a statement from Blackboard.]

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • a cloud, an AI chip, and a padlock interconnected by circuit-like lines

    CrowdStrike Report: Attackers Increasingly Targeting Cloud, AI Systems

    According to the 2025 Threat Hunting Report from CrowdStrike, adversaries are not just using AI to supercharge attacks — they are actively targeting the AI systems organizations deploy in production. Combined with a surge in cloud exploitation, this shift marks a significant change in the threat landscape for enterprises.

  • digital learning resources including a document, video tutorial, quiz checklist, pie chart, and AI cloud icon

    Quizizz Rebrands as Wayground, Announces New AI Features

    Learning platform Quizizz has become Wayground, in a rebranding meant to reflect "the platform's evolution from a quiz tool into a more versatile supplemental learning platform that's supported by AI," according to a news announcement.

  • Schoolchildren Work on Personal Computers

    Code.org Reinvents Hour of Code as Hour of AI

    Education nonprofit Code.org has partnered with CSforALL to launch the Hour of AI, a global initiative providing learning activities for AI education.

  • student holding a smartphone with thumbs-up and thumbs-down icons, surrounded by abstract digital media symbols and interface elements

    Teaching Media Literacy? Start by Teaching Decision-Making

    Decision-making is a skill that must be developed — not assumed. Students need opportunities to learn the tools and practices of effective decision-making so they can apply what they know in meaningful, real-world contexts.