Open edX

The Open edX platform is the open-source software, originally developed by Piotr Mitros, whose development led to the creation of the edX organization. On June 1, 2013, edX open sourced the platform, naming it Open edX to distinguish it from the organization itself. The source code can be found on GitHub. Maintenance was transferred to edX, an MIT/Harvard education initiative, in 2012.

When edX was acquired in 2021 by 2U, the Open edX team and maintenance were transferred to the Center for Reimagining Learning (tCRIL), a nonprofit founded by Harvard and MIT with the proceeds from the acquisition. In 2023, the nonprofit was renamed the Axim Collaborative.

Uses
Open edX was designed for the MITx project, which was renamed to the edX project and made into a separate 501(c)3 after Harvard joined. This remains the largest global installation as of 2022, with over 3000 courses and 500,000 regular users. The Open edX community maintains a catalog of other installations, including fully-hosted learning sites open to public courses and 350 other instances run by organizations of all sizes.

An Open edX marketplace also features partners that provide various services to community members running their own instances in multiple languages.

Software
The platform has been released one to two times a year since 2013. Each release is named after a tree, honoring the tree of knowledge.

The Open edX server-side software is based on Python, with Django as the web application framework.

Community
Platform design and development have been co-designed with its community from early in the project's history. The community maintains several working groups focused on marketing, build-test-release cycles, translation, data design, front-end design, and code deprecation.

The community hosts an annual Open edX Conference, which rotates worldwide each year. In 2022 it was held in Portugal.