I really appreciate that Dave Ackerman (NYU) asked me some questions publicly about my new situation. My response is not particularly to Dave. At times I try to make clear parts of my response that specifically do not apply to Dave and NYU.<\/p>\n
Comments welcome.<\/p>\n
There are other examples where someone on the board has changed jobs and where there was some concern as to whether their new job would cause a problem. \u00a0 In one of the previous cases, I was privately quite concerned – but that concern turned out to be completely unwarranted and that person has done an outstanding job on the board functioning as an individual, representing the community rather than their company. \u00a0They carefully kept the roles separate as will I. \u00a0Ethics demands this.<\/p>\n
It is fully my intention to run for board at some point in the future when my term ends at the end of this year. You will be relieved to know that I am not on the Apereo founding board. \u00a0 The earliest I would consider running for the board would be at the end of this year as I would like to focus \u00a0my energies on getting 2.9 released. \u00a0So at some point in the future, the question of how will people vote will be answered. \u00a0 When\/if I run for the board in the future, you will be able to campaign against me, vote against me and if enough people vote against me in that election and I lose, my shame and fall from grace will be public and complete.<\/p>\n
I would point out that long before I was a Blackboard employee, I had plenty of detractors. \u00a0If you read my book, you will see that I do not make strategic decisions based on whether it makes people happy or not. \u00a0I was not at all sure that I would be elected to the board when I ran back in 2009. \u00a0Perhaps it was because the people who voted for trusted me as a human being and committed community member than University of Michigan employee number 8675309. \u00a0Perhaps they knew me well enough to know that my commitment to this community is as deep as it can be and is unwavering regardless of what company or university happens to be paying for my travel expenses last year, this year, or next year.<\/p>\n
Blackboard is not a competitor to Sakai. \u00a0\u00a0Blackboard is not Coke to Sakai’s Pepsi. \u00a0 Blackboard is Coke, Unicon is Pepsi, \u00a0rSmart is Starbucks, and Sakai is Toastmasters where we all get together on a Friday evening and give speeches to each other.<\/p>\n
“… Thanks Michael Feldstein, that was indeed an excellent speech about \u00a0“Amazingly Accurate Advanced Alliteration” (applause). \u00a0 But before you all go, lets make sure to thank Unicon for providing the snacks for tonight’s Toastmasters meeting (applause). \u00a0 Next week it’s LongSight’s turn to provide snacks, right? \u00a0See you all next Friday when Nate Angell will be giving a speech on why “Portland is So Damn Awesome” (yes again) (audience groans)…..”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Sakai is an inclusive *open* source project and a non-profit corporation dedicated to supporting, expanding, and advancing an open community around free software that we collectively contribute to. \u00a0The non-profit Sakai Foundation was not formed as the “place where commercial market opponents of Blackboard secretly meet with angry former Blackboard customers to \u00a0collectively align their attack strategies to achieve maximum damage to Blackboard”.<\/p>\n
Sakai is also not a secret club that meets in a tree house named the “Boys Are NOT Allowed Club”.<\/p>\n
Check the bylaws to see if there is any reference to “secret strategy plotting sessions” or membership rules regarding boys.<\/p>\n
Sakai Foundation ByLaws<\/a><\/p>\n
Please read the bylaws and come back here and quote the parts that justify treating Blackboard differently than any other company with an intention to support and invest in the Sakai community. \u00a0I challenge you to find any passage in the bylaws that pertains to Blackboard that does not equally to Unicon or rSmart.<\/p>\n
If you look at the board members of IMS (a non-profit industry alliance):<\/p>\n
IMS Global Learning Consortim Board of Directors<\/a><\/p>\n
You see lots of competitors on the same board. \u00a0It turns out that this is a *great* idea and frankly the makeup of the IMS board that includes a diversity of commercial interests is precisely why IMS works so well.<\/p>\n
Blackboard *is* a competitor to rSmart, Unicon, LongSight, Edia, IBM, OpenCollab, Samoo, Seensoft, Sungard, Serensoft, KEL, Embanet, and many others with commercial interest in Sakai.<\/p>\n
Sakai Commercial Affiliates<\/a><\/p>\n
If they can be on the board, then why not Blackboard? \u00a0If I was on the board of directors of one of those actual competitors and a Blackboard employee it would be a gigantic issue.<\/p>\n
Actually, I was on the board of a company that provides Sakai services and is<\/strong> a competitor to Blackboard and regularly goes against Blackboard in RFQ situations. \u00a0 This Monday at 7:25PM, I offered my resignation to that board when I became a Blackboard employee and the board accepted my resignation with regrets. \u00a0It was very very very sad for me personally because I completely believed in what that company was trying to do and still believe in their mission – but I could not be on their board for the very reasons you cite. I typed the message at 4:45 (10 minutes after the press release went public) but kept it as draft for several hours because I just could not bring myself to hit the send button. I knew that my fellow board members would not see the press release until I sent the message so I wanted to delay it as long as I could. The people that I met through that board have become wonderful friends and I already miss them and the conversations we would have at board dinners after the board meetings were over. \u00a0The next board meeting was in Tahoe in a few weeks and I had been looking forward to it for a very long time as all of our other board meetings have been in San Francisco and LA and after five years, we were going to finally have a board meeting in Tahoe. And now I can’t go and spend time with dear friends. Resigning from that board and the possibility that I will never see some of those friends again is the only thing that has brought tears to my eyes this week.<\/p>\n
Over the past few years working on IMS standards, I have developed friendships at Jenzabar, Desire2Learn, Instructure, and other companies. \u00a0While expect those friendships to continue as friendships, there will immediately be a natural loss of camaraderie, openness, sense of adventure, and shared purpose in those relationships. \u00a0This loss is because of my new association with Blackboard – not because of my long-standing association with Sakai.<\/p>\n
While I was working in IMS, I was open about my involvement in the Sakai community – I actively built reference implementations in Sakai and often used Sakai as the first LMS to run through interoperability tests and in public demonstrations of new IMS capabilities. \u00a0I continuously used Sakai to help engineer IMS standards. \u00a0All the commercial participants in IMS knew<\/strong> I was the “Sakai guy” in addition to the “IMS guy”. \u00a0It was never a problem. \u00a0Never. \u00a0Desire2Learn may compete with rSmart – but they don’t compete with “Sakai” – we all understood that – Sakai was seen by all as a fair and honest participant in the marketplace.<\/p>\n
It is ironic that virtually everyone in the marketplace from the outside (for profit and open source) sees Sakai as a fair, honest and open place where anyone can come and exchange ideas with the other members of a community committed to broadly advancing teaching and learning in a non-threatening manner. \u00a0It is literally only a *few* people *inside* the community that see us as “Seal Team 6” carefully plotting the end of Blackboard since 2003. \u00a0Folks, we don’t even have a helicopter – let alone many special stealthy helicopters. If we have been planning some kind of attack on Blackboard all this time, the Sakai board should approve the purchase of a tank or a flame thrower at the very minimum.<\/p>\n
If Desire2Learn or Instructure decided to offer Sakai services and started to contribute real resources and real value (not just a check for $10K) to the Sakai community – I would make the case that they should be welcomed with open arms too.<\/p>\n
Back to my participation on the Sakai board and in the Sakai community, \u00a0both the Sakai and Moodle communities (and foundations) need to be open to all that can help and contribute. \u00a0Open source communities like Drupal, OLAT, Joomla, and many others have these commercial-as-evil conversations over-and-over-and-over … … and-over.<\/p>\n
The only time there is ever a problem in open communities is when one company becomes so dominant to the point where it employs a significant majority of the committers and creatives that produce an open source product (i.e. like Oracle and MySql) where that company could switch to a closed-source strategy any time it likes and retain enough committers to successfully maintain the code in a proprietary manner.<\/p>\n
I wrote about this in a blog post in 2010 when Oracle bought MySql:<\/p>\n
Why an Open Source Community Should not cede Leadership to a Commercial Entity \u2013 MySql\/Oracle<\/a><\/p>\n
The blog post is not a perfect analog to the current situation because mostly I am talking about how GPL is not as much protection as it claims to be and leads communities to a false sense of security where one company holds the copyright or a majority of committers. \u00a0 The post *is* about a community that thought things would be all right so they let others do all the investing. \u00a0 This quote from my blog post seems to apply in the current situation:<\/p>\n
“Successful open source projects need to make sure to feed and take care of their\u00a0bazaar\u00a0\u2013 their volunteer technical\u00a0core for the product. Be very wary of the \u201cget resources quick\u201d or \u201cget results quick\u201d schemes where you cede\u00a0leadership to something or someone in the cathedral.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Wow – that would seem to be highly critical of me and my recent actions, right? \u00a0Oops! \u00a0Perhaps I should quickly go back and edit that blog post to be more charitable to evil corporations. \u00a0Not going to happen. Wouldn’t be prudent. I stand behind my words.<\/p>\n
If you read the entire post, it is a call to action to insure *diversity* and avoid apathy in an open source community and to make sure that unaffiliated individuals remain involved in the community and that the collective grooms *multiple* corporations to be involved in the community. \u00a0For-profits in open source is frankly the driving engine of progress – without for-profit involvement, Apache and Linux would not function. \u00a0I am not<\/b> talking about RedHat because I despise proprietary forks that remove talent and resources from the community and then turn around and use revenue from their sales of a product they got for free to market against the community product (like Ubuntu). \u00a0I am<\/b> talking about the hundreds of other responsible companies in the Linux community like IBM that pay employees and let them work freely in the community edition of an open source product as a fraction of their job. \u00a0Like Google’s 20% time.<\/p>\n
In Sakai, Universities are great at forming the starting capital to kick off new initiatives like CLE and OAE. \u00a0 But frankly they are not so good at writing a check year after year to keep something like CLE properly fed so it can survive. \u00a0 Foundation staff on the CLE was five people in 2005 based mostly on contributions from Higher-Ed IT. \u00a0 Since about four months ago, the foundation staff working on the CLE is zero and shortly after the last foundation resource was removed, the CLE progress toward release slowed to a crawl and a few weeks ago, the release was postponed indefinitely. \u00a0The only remaining *dedicated* release management resources moving the Sakai 2.9 release forward come from LongSight and Unicon.<\/p>\n
I get the sense that all this irrational fear is that somehow Blackboard will “take over” Sakai. \u00a0That is simply not possible as long as others in the community remain committed to investing in Sakai. \u00a0 As long as the community remains rich and diverse, Blackboard is just one of many sources of resources to help us all move forward and their resources make it better for everyone – including Blackboard’s commercial competitors. \u00a0If the current members of the community continue to withdraw their financial support from the foundation and their staff support of Sakai projects and efforts, you are ceding the community to whomever is left at the end.<\/p>\n
There is the saying, “Will the last person leaving the room please turn out the lights.” \u00a0 In open source, it is a little different, “The last organization in the room, owns the software.”. \u00a0 My plea to this community is to “please stop leaving the room”.<\/p>\n
It has been said that I can never quit writing a blog post or email message while I am ahead. \u00a0 And this time is no different. \u00a0:)<\/p>\n
I would suggest that those who vehemently oppose Backboard’s involvement ask themselves the following questions. \u00a0These do not apply to anyone in particular and certainly do not apply to you David as your contributions to Sakai OAE and this community are above reproach.<\/p>\n
– Do I really have a logical<\/i> reason for my opposition? \u00a0Is there anything in the bylaws or the tenets of open source that discriminates and declares or allows one to logically determine that one commercial source of resources is “evil” and another commercial source of resources is “good”?<\/p>\n
– How can you be opposed to increasing diversity of thinking, ideas and approaches? \u00a0How can you be opposed to having one more source of financial and resources to our community? \u00a0Tell us all a logical reason for your position without using the word ‘evil’. \u00a0I seriously doubt you can.<\/p>\n
– Are you uncomfortable finding out that there has been an increasing disconnect between public puffery supporting Sakai and private and shameful reductions in contributed resources? \u00a0Have you been part of the puffery? \u00a0 Have you withdrawn resources? \u00a0I am sure you have great reasons as to why you withdrew resources – everyone does.\u00a0 Talk to the hand.<\/p>\n
– Does it bother you that about 40 higher educations stopped<\/b> supporting the Sakai Foundation over the past five years? \u00a0Are you uncomfortable that so far, higher education seems unable take care of its own in the long run?<\/p>\n
– Are you uncomfortable that for-profit companies already<\/b> provide all of the long-term committed resources for the Sakai CLE product? \u00a0Would you perhaps feel more comfortable if there were three companies providing consistent dedicated resources for the CLE community instead of two?<\/p>\n
– Are you uncomfortable knowing that if community members had continued to contribute enough resources to maintain the “Sakai commons”, I would might not be working for Blackboard right now?<\/p>\n
Welcome to open and community source folks. \u00a0 Resources matter. \u00a0The commons matter. \u00a0There is no such thing as a free lunch.<\/p>\n
Please don’t read that last point as me having any second thoughts about my decision. Trust me, this will turn out to be the smartest decision I have ever made. I am not looking back. I am looking forward and breathless with anticipation. Soon, you will see that what we have accomplished so far will turn out to have only been the warm up act.<\/p>\n