Why I Support the Consolidation Of Sakai and Jasig into Apereo

I have been thinking about writing a blog post as to why I am a strong supporter of the consolidation of the two foundations into Apereo. But then Steve Swinsberg did an outstanding job of summarizing the issues and the actions needed. Please read his blog post here:

http://steveswinsburg.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/why-i-support-the-jasig-sakai-consolidation/

In short, Steve’s post points out:

  • Financial savings
  • Coordinated conferences
  • Greater sustainability that comes from less cost across both organizations

I agree with everything Steve says.

The reasons Steve points out in his post would be logic enough to do the consolidaton – but to me as important as those reasons are, there is an even more important reason to do the consolidation.

We as higher education need a foundation that allows for the straightforward expansion and bringing in new projects. For example I would love to see projects like this have an annual conference and solid foundation to insure the long-term ownership of their source code, incubation, and having a community of like minded individuals to help advance their causes. Here are some projects that need a foundation:

P.S. These projects are *just* examples – they may never be part of Apereo – I just list them as efforts that might someday benefit from a foundation to hold the IP. They are *just examples*.

In a sense none of these projects would join the Sakai Foundation because Sakai means a particular LMS. And they would not join Jasig because it is not about learning.

Apereo *is* something they would, could, and should join.

This is why the combination of Sakai and Jasig is far more valuable to us than the two separate organizations. This is not just about saving money and being more efficient – this is about building an amazing portfolio of open source projects that work together under a large tent.

Others feel that this somehow changes the Sakai “brand” – nothing could be further from the truth. Apero is just a foundation – it is not the projects. The Sakai, uPortal, uMobile, Class2Go, CAS, OpenCast, etc etc will be *the* brands. Apereo will always be the background brand / holding organization – much like Jasig is the “background brand” to uPortal already. This does not harm the Sakai brand in any way – to me it enhances it because we can make “Sakai” mean an LMS product and really refine the brand going forward.

Please look at Steve’s post above to understand how to vote and do so *right now*. An abstain vote is a no vote.

While I am very supportive of the consolidation – I want the members to make the decision explicitly – so please vote. Don’t make the decision by inaction.

(sorry for the typos – I am jumping on a plane to Barcelona)