I was interviewed for Inside Higher Education in regards to the BlackBoard/Sakai Connector:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/15/sakai
I added a comment to the article:
When dealing with a company – we should always assume that their purpose is to increase profit. Increasingly, companies realize that by creating *truly open* ecologies around their product – they make *more* money rather then less money. When customers perceive the market as “fair” generally overall investment increases across the board. When there is a real or perceived battle between open source and proprietary companies, many organizations with money “stand pat” and invest in neither until things settle down.
Part of making a truly open ecology is standards – I work with IMS (www.imsglobal.org) and we have been developing standards like IMS Learning Tools Interoperability and others that touch on these areas. Blackboard is participating in these efforts and we hope that much of the aspects of the connector will ultimately be covered by formal, published, and interoperable standards.
But it is a delicate balancing act – products and standards move at different paces – if we wait for a perfect standard – products will be held off forever. If we never build a product – we never reveal the fine technical details needed in the standard.
When I look at all of this, the balance tips towards being engaged in the effort and trying to influence the direction to ultimately improve the experience of teachers and learners regardless of what enterprise CMS system their school or campus happens to have installed.