Influence of libre software in education: The blogs planet case

Libre (free, open source) software brings new opportunities, but also new troubles, to the education experience. It provides a great deal of new tools that can be used unexpensively and easily. On the opportunities side, it enables customization and adaptation to special needs, and full reproduction of educational experiences without depending on a budget for expensive software licenses. But it also brings the troubles of charting a new territory, maintaining applications in a demanding environment, and finding ways of adapting to specific needs. In this paper, we introduce these issues by analyzing a practical case study which has been run in real classes during several years: the contribution by students to a "planet" ("blog of blogs") with topics related to an educational subject.