The problem is that as soon as you are any threat to them, they'll either sue you (they have a ton of e-learning related patents) or buy you. Not sure you want to go into that area.
Our University recently switched to Moodle, which is an open source competitor.
My university tried to write their own. But then each faculty decided they didn't like it and then wrote THEIR own.
Now I have to log into about 5 different systems to get anything done.
So did ours. The problem is that most faculty hates it. You need to realize that most professors are quite set in their ways and have been using Blackboard for years, so they're opposing the full roll-out. Even some of the I.T. Faculty want to stick with Blackboard.
Same reason our University had such a hard time switching from Internet Explorer, and is still stuck on Windows XP. Most faculty members are not power users and they want to stick with what they know, no matter how crappy it is.
Is this what's keeping all the e-learning UIs so crappy and 1990s-looking? That's sad.
:) Recently acquired by Bb (from Elluminate). Not a user of the software so I can't really comment on that, I'm a Web guy. My Wife uses it and does occasionally complain to me now that I work for Bb, as if I could do something about it. I like the team that I work with though, good people.
there's Sakai... and various customized versions, such as Berkeley's bSpace and Stanford's Coursework