Chamilo
Chamilo is a free software (under GNU/GPL licensing) e-learning and content management system, aimed at improving access to education and knowledge globally. It is backed up by the Chamilo Association, which has goals including the promotion of the software, the maintenance of a clear communication channel and the building of a network of services providers and software contributors. The Chamilo project aims at ensuring the availability and quality of education at a reduced cost, through the distribution of its software free of charge, the improvement of its interface for 3rd world countries devices portability and the provision  of a free access public e-learning campus. History. The Chamilo project was officially launched on 18 January 2010 by a considerable part of the contributing community of the (also GNU/GPL) Dokeos software, after growing discontent on the communication policy inside the Dokeos community and a series of choices that were making parts of the community insecure about the future of developments. As such, it is considered a fork of Dokeos (at least in its 1.8 series). The reaction to the fork was immediate, with more than 500 active users registering on the Chamilo forums in the first fortnight  and more contributions collected in one month than in the previous whole year. The origins of Chamilo's code date back to 2000, with the start of the Claroline project, which was forked in 2004 to launch the Dokeos project. In 2010, it was forked again with the publication of Chamilo 1.8.6.2. Chamilo used to come in two versions. The LMS (or "1.*") version directly builds on Dokeos. Chamilo LCMS (or 3.0) is a completely new software platform for e-learning and collaboration. However, due to frequent structural changes, the lack of migration workflow from LMS, the complexity of its  interface and a certain lack of leadership, support for the project was abandoned by the association in 2015 to focus on improved LMS development. Community. Due to Chamilo's educational purpose, most of the community is related to the educational or the human resources sectors. The community itself works together to offer an easy to use e-learning system. Active. Community members are considered active when they start contributing to the project (through documentation, forum contributions, development, design). In 2009, members of the Dokeos community started working actively on the One Laptop Per Child project together with a primary school  in the Salto city in Uruguay. One of the founding members of the Chamilo Association then registered as a contributing project for the OLPC in which his company would make efforts to ensure the portability of the platform to the XO laptop. The effort has been, since then, continued as part of the Chamilo project. Passive. The community is considered "passive" when they use the software but do not contribute directly to it. As of February 2016, the passive community was estimated to be more than 11,000,000 users around the world. Chamilo Association. Since June 2010, the Chamilo Association has  been a legally registered non-profit association (VZW) under Belgian law. The association was created to serve the general goal of improving the Chamilo project's organization and to avoid a conflict of interest between the organization controlling the software project decision process and the best interests of the community using the software. Its founding members, also its first board of directors, were originally 7, of which 3 are from the private e-learning sector and 4 were from the public educational sector. The current board of directors is composed of 5 members. Technical details. Chamilo is developed mainly in  PHP and relies on a LAMP or WAMP system on the server side. On the client side, it only requires a modern web browser (versions younger than 3 years old) and optionally requires the Flash plugin to make use of advanced features. Interoperability. The Chamilo LMS (1.*) series benefits from third party implementations that allows easy connexion to Joomla (through JFusion plugin), Drupal (through Drupal-Chamilo module), OpenID (secure authentication framework) and Oracle (through specific PowerBuilder implementations). Extensions. Chamilo offers a connector to videoconferencing systems (like BigBlueButton or OpenMeetings) as well as a presentations to learning paths converter, which require  advanced system administration skills to install. Releases. You can get more information on releases from the original website. Chamilo LMS and Chamilo LCMS are two separate products of the Chamilo Association, which is why the releases history is split below. Statistics. The free-to-use Chamilo campus registered 100,000 users in October 2011 (15 months after its launch), for 38,000 users in December 2010 (11 months after its launch). The Peruvian private Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola reported 1,700 users connected in the same 120 seconds time frame in August 2011. Globally, Chamilo registered 700,000 users in October 2011, more  than 5,000,000 users in June 2013 and more than 20,000,000 users in August 2018.