First impressions are vital. We missed out on a major opportunity when we were showing people latest code from cvs head - too much broke and the impression was created that dotLRN is unreliable, flaky software. We are recovering slowly from this after help from the team at Sloan. People here are willing to be told this is what we can do today and this is what we expect to do tomorrow (that's already better than you can get from Blackboard). But the bit you offer today *must* be rock solid.
Failing to give due weight to this would restrict distribution to enthusiasts and dotLRN will not reach the mainstream.
Blackboard has had 2 minor glitches in 15 months of running here. This is the sort of reliability you will need.
