One of the greatest benefits that has come out of the open source communities are education based software and web based programs that help enhance education and learning worldwide. When you look at open source in that manner and the kind of effect it can have on the world, it makes it nearly impossible to despise the open source movement altogether. In this article I wanted to highlight 4 of the main open source elearning and eworking platforms that exist today. All four are the same in idea but have some different features. You choice on which is the best will most likely be entirely upon what types of features you require for your needs.

• Moodle – with over 35,000 current users this is definitely one of the largest and most popular at the time. Moodle has great documentation to help you use the system and also have a developer build plugins or any type of customizations you may need.
• OLAT – This program was developed overseas so it is well known for it’s multilingual capabilities. It utilizes some cool Ajax to enable faster loading of pages on the web. It has a great calendar system along with a great course management system to create and archive courses.
• Claroline – This is my personal favorite of the group due to it’s balance of features along with user friendliness. This has a great chat and forum feature to enable collaboration among students and teachers.
• Sakai - Probably my least favorite of the 4 however effective for some. Very similar features to before mentioned programs.

Hopefully this is helpful to you in finding a solution for your open source e-learning system needs. Remember, that because these systems are open source just install all of them and try them all out before you make a decision on what you are going to use.