Reaction to Michael’s Blog Post

I am loving the discourse around this topic – I like the fact that there are many voices – lets keep talking about this and really explore and understand these issues. Regardless of the outcome – the more we as a community understand about our governance – the better off we are we are. Here is Michael’s Blog Post. My response is below.


Michael – I understand and agree with your position on conflict of interest. Conflict of interest is more of a tactical issue – how particular decisions get made in particular meetings – and I agree that commercial folks have more *structural* conflict of interest – one significant example is that we do not require board approval for a new higher education partner – but we do need board approval for a new commercial partner. My concern and the source of my comments is not tactical but instead more strategic I am concerned that (a) we are still defining “community source” – we are still figuring out and defining the core values and even the mission of the Sakai Foundation – and I want those values to be reflective of the community and sharing and altruism of the higher education world – rather than driven by the need to improve the monetization Sakai IP in the next few quarters, and (b) by putting a just a few of our commercial partners on the board it creates an impression of undue competitive advantage could accrue to those commercial partners that secure seats on the Sakai Foundation Board. In order to avoid both the perception and realities of unfair competitive practices within the Sakai commercial ecosystem, we are best served if for a while we keep the focus of the board on higher education and not monetization. To continue on this second point – part of my proposal was to *increase* the access that commercial partners have to the Sakai Foundation by creating an advisory board where we invited *all* commercial partners to participate. I am very supportive of a healthy commercial ecosystem around Sakai – my proposal intended to *improve* the situation – it is not intended to harm commercial partners. Like you I am very committed to a diverse board – I love the idea of bringing in talent and perspectives to the board – a key here is that this works best when the underlying community values are well-established. I would love to see more participation from smaller schools, and a better representation reflecting the worldwide nature of Sakai, and I would love to see folks from places like Facebook or Diigo on the board to give us a better perspective for the future.
So the essence of my proposal is a campaign speech for this year entreating the voters to prefer candidates from higher education instead of candidates from our commercial partners – even if those candidates come from a smaller school or a less-known school. Frankly we have seen an immediate and positive impact from electing Josh Baron last year. We have seen an exciting increased focus on the use and application of Sakai – I credit this in a large part to Josh’s board position. Perhaps we should elect some more teachers to the Sakai board.