MyOpenMath was born out of free, open source software developed by David Lippman, a community college math professor in Washington State, starting in 2005. With a little grant support and a lot of his free time, David ran a state-wide installation of that software at wamap.org. Faculty from around the state got involved, and collaboratively contributed much of the question content now found on MyOpenMath. Out of the Open Course Library project in Washington, several complete courses based on open textbooks were created. Other folks got involved, including James Sousa from Phoenix College who contributed a huge collection of questions tied to his video examples.
In 2011 David started MyOpenMath as a way to share with the world this software system and all the great content that had been built around open textbooks. He self-funded the site for the first year, then joined forces with Lumen Learning, which had been using MyOpenMath with the Kaleidoscope Project. In 2017, Lumen split off their own version of MyOpenMath, called Lumen OHM, to help differentiate their low-cost supported service from the free, community MyOpenMath site.
David and Lumen both feel very strongly that a free community version of MyOpenMath should always exist, without advertisements. They are also committed that all the content remain open as well, so it could be moved to a local install of the IMathAS software if desired or needed. For now, Lumen is providing financial support for MyOpenMath. In the future, MyOpenMath will likely explore a "freemium" model, in which institutions will be able to pay an annual hosting fee in return for a basic service level agreement and data sharing contract, as well as access to additional administrative features. MyOpenMath will never provide instructor support services. David's intention is that students will never be directly charged on MyOpenMath, as ensuring student access to high quality materials is our number one priority.
