Why Blackboard does what it does

Joseph Hart at Eastern Oregon University has expressed an interesting view on the whole Blackboard patent stuff: "My own belief is that Blackboard does perceive a serious threat from the now highly developed open source learning management systems that will become even more available to both small institutions and large institutions. Blackboard abandoned their base of small institutions to go after the big money large institutions, but many of the most prestigious large institutions are operating within consortia to push forward open source efforts; therefore Blackboard is in danger of losing both the big plums and the little plums--they'll be left with the pits." I guess this is quite true. What is the big institutions turn to Sakai, or Moodle, or .LRN?
BTW: All the latest news on Blackboard and the patent is handily captured by Stephen Downes.