LMS is an active and evolving work in progress.
A number of early prototypes were produced and discarded before he released version 1.0 upon a largely unsuspecting world on August 20, 2002. This version was targeted towards smaller, more intimate classes at University level, and was the subject of research case studies that closely analysed the nature of collaboration and reflection that occurred among these small groups of adult participants.
Since then there has been steady series of new releases adding new features, better scalability and improved performance.
As LMS has spread and the community has grown, more input is being drawn from a wider variety of people in different teaching situations. For example, LMS is now used not only in Universities, but in high schools, primary schools, non-profit organisations, private companies, by independent teachers and even homeschooling parents. A growing number of people from around the world are contributing to LMS in different ways.
An important feature of the LMS project is paradisolms.net, which provides a central point for information, discussion and collaboration among LMS users, who include system administrators, teachers, researchers, instructional designers and of course, developers. Like LMS, this site is always evolving to suit the needs of the community, and like LMS it will always be Free.
In 2003, the company lms.com was launched to provide additional commercial support for those who need it, as well as managed hosting, consulting and other services. This has now expanded in the LMS Partner network of over 40 companies world-wide.
For more about our future plans for LMS, see the Future roadmap.