instructure/canvas-lms on Hacker News

Canvas itself is also open source ( https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms ), which was the big appeal of it originally in a world where Blackboard had a stranglehold on the LMS market.

comment by skywhopper · 2026-05-12 · in Instructure pays ransom to Canvas hackers

…I couldn't even get a development environment setup because of their storage space requirements. https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/wiki/Quick-Start > It is recommended that you have at least 150GB of available hard drive space, 8GB…

comment by owenpalmer · 2026-05-08 · in Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

I thought this was pretty hilarious: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/pull/2630/changes/...

comment by hackyhacky · 2026-05-08 · in Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

Canvas is actually also open source and can be self-hosted: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms (I don't have experience in hosting either software so I can't really comment beyond that)

comment by senkora · 2026-05-08 · in Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

…Just look at the code. As mentioned before, it's open source . Here I saved you a google search: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by freedomben · 2026-05-08 · in Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

The alternative could be to self host. https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/wiki/Production-St... Or maybe consider not following the herd, and use a much simpler but sufficient system that can be self hosted, if available.

comment by tejohnso · 2026-05-08 · in Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

A bunch of plugins running on canvas.instructure.com are proprietary, according to their FAQ: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/wiki/FAQ . I would guess these plugins are chosen so a majority of user won't want to live without…

comment by Meneth · 2026-05-08 · in Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

Seems like instructure canvas is FOSS: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/tree/master

comment by master-lincoln · 2026-05-08 · in Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

You don’t need to roll your own LMS—you can self-host Canvas: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/wiki/Production-St...

comment by jcgl · 2026-05-08 · in Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

…you can deploy your own software you can control and modify as you need. Canvas is mostly FOSS https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by flexagoon · 2026-05-08 · in Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is... haha i went to go check and they haven't merged a PR since 2017

comment by scratchyone · 2026-05-08 · in Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

It is open source, so you could send pull requests with improvements: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by auxiliarymoose · 2026-05-07 · in Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

Canvas is an open-source learning management system used at universities: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by anjiro · 2024-07-01 · in Ask HN: what are examples of successful "open-source alternatives"?

…but has other proprietary services that interact heavily with it. It's never been a problem 1: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by freedomben · 2022-12-04 · in Garage: An open-source distributed object storage service

The Canvas LMS: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by zwily · 2022-04-29 · in Actual is going open-source

…a source of the false accusations. Also, it's open source if any hackers would like to take a look. https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by kart23 · 2021-05-10 · in Online cheating charges upend Dartmouth Medical School

…more invasive solutions. [0]: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I... [1]: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/blob/master/public...

comment by easton · 2020-11-30 · in College students are learning hard lessons about anti-cheating software

Canvas ( https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms ) is open-source

comment by enjoyyourlife · 2020-06-10 · in Teaching my MIT classes with only free/libre software

…sample code won’t be much more helpful than the docs of the various plugins like Switchman. 1: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms 2: https://github.com/instructure/switchman

comment by guptaneil · 2020-05-03 · in Ask HN: How come there is no example code for B2B-SaaS apps?

…Software Developer About Instructure: We make software that makes people smarter, including Canvas ( http://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms ), an open source learning management system used by universities and K-12 schools, and Bridge, a…

comment by meakr1900 · 2015-09-01 · in Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2015)

…Software Developer About Instructure: We make software that makes people smarter, including Canvas ( http://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms ), an open source learning management system used by universities and K-12 schools, and Bridge, a…

comment by meakr1900 · 2015-08-03 · in Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2015)

Instructure (the guys behind the LMS Canvas), are pre-IPO. https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/wiki http://www.instructure.com/

comment by adammichaelc · 2014-09-19 · in Ask HN: Are there startups that went open-source and succeed?

Looks like it's open source [0]. If they have a clean API it might be doable without scraping. [0] https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by cel · 2014-09-18 · in bb: Command line Blackboard client/scraper

Instructure's learning management system called Canvas is built in RoR and is open source. https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by SSilver2k2 · 2014-08-13 · in Ask HN: Some real world, open source Rails project

…What were the motivations to develop this system instead of enhancing or forking another lms? [1] https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by Pxl_Buzzard · 2014-01-26 · in FenixEdu, a open source academic and learning management system

Just wanted to note that Canvas LMS is also open source (full disclosure: I work for instructure): https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by fivetanley · 2014-01-26 · in Christ, I hate Blackboard

…api as a developer at EmeraldExam.com and find it to be terrific. They're an open-source rails app: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms EDIT: should also mention lore (lore.com), which was founded by some friends of mine and fairly…

comment by rattray · 2014-01-25 · in Christ, I hate Blackboard

…have been adopting is open-core and has been quite successful over the past few years. 1. https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by ryankshaw · 2013-08-22 · in Nginx Plus

Hm, I wonder why they didn't check out instructure. https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms It's open source, and there's a paid arm of it for universities to outsource their IT needs.

comment by randall · 2013-04-03 · in ‘Linux of online learning’: edX and Stanford build open source platform

…http://canvas.net We believe deeply in Free Software; our core product is published under AGPLv3: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms Work at a place where you can know that with each problem you solve, you make the lives of students…

comment by phinze · 2013-04-01 · in Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2013)

…right next to me, writing coffeescript (as with all new code we write here at instructure, see: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/tree/stable/app/co... )--and loving it. whatever "crazy gotchas" he found back then are obviously…

comment by ryankshaw · 2012-09-17 · in CoffeeScript: less typing, bad readability

…of models to ignore). This catches anything included by plugins too, which can be helpful. https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/blob/9b52a51b6a37e...

comment by zwily · 2012-03-04 · in Hacked: commit to rails master on GitHub

…I needed to spin up an LMS, so I wanted to make sure folks were aware of it. p.s. Canvas is foss https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/wiki

comment by cilantro · 2011-10-17 · in Google and Pearson Announce Free LMS Service to Compete with Blackboard/Moodle

sick. the lms app is built on rails. https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

comment by dustineichler · 2011-02-01 · in Instructure Launches To Root Blackboard Out Of Universities