Open University Blogging System?

Jim Groom has a new blog post about sign-up restrictions on the University of Mary Washington blogs, noting that the University of Calgary has opened their blogging system up to anyone. Groom started the UMW blogs and sign-up is currently restricted to persons with a UMW e-mail account. From the article:

So, I got to thinking out loud, “What the hell is going on here, is UMW Blogs really open? What are we BlackBoard or something? Pandering to the term open, but slaving under the idea of ‘membership’ in the form of an institutional email?” I punched the wall, I banged my head against a stand up mirror and bloodied my forehead a bit.