[Using Sakai] Blog Post and Press Release about Dr. Chuck, Blackboard and Sakai

[Ray Davis]

I'll let more business-savvy types and those with access to non-public 
deliberations decide whether working for Blackboard constitutes more of 
a conflict than working for a commercial Sakai host or working for a 
non-profit consortium created as a meeting ground for competitors. I do 
want to follow up on two general points, though.

* Does an individual's ability to contribute to and benefit from the 
Sakai community _require_ membership on the Board and the Technical 
Coordination Committee and access to non-public information? I know that 
distasteful insider/outsider division was solidly in place when I first 
started working with Sakai, but I'd hoped we'd moved past it some time ago.

* Rather than being some sort of slur, don't conflict-of-interest 
guidelines assume that you're dealing with an ethical person? (After 
all, if you've decided to depend on an unethical person, you're pretty 
much done for no matter what.)

As I've understood it, confidentiality is a matter of not _revealing_ 
information (whether anyone else is interested or not); it generally 
just requires attention and will-power.

But conflict of interest is a matter of not _acting_ on information, and 
that's considerably more difficult. The agreements I've signed over my 
career seemed meant to avoid placing me in an impossible moral position: 
either I take both party's situations into account when doing my job (in 
which case I violate the trust of at least one party), or I deliberately 
do a worse job than I might (which is also not very ethical). Selective 
recusal itself can send an signal.

YMMV, IMO, etc., etc.,
Ray

On 3/31/12 9:14 AM, csev wrote:
>
> On Mar 29, 2012, at 6:54 PM, David C Ackerman wrote:
>
> David,
>
> These are great questions. I am glad you trusted and respected me enough
> to ask them in a public manner. I am responding to the questions broadly
> addressing the community rather than specifically addressing you.
>
> Later in the message, I am somewhat critical of the community in general
> and I try to carefully note where my criticism of institutions not
> supporting the commons absolutely does *not* apply to you or NYU because
> your support for this community has been unwavering and I thank you.
>
> /Chuck
>
> (and yes this is a long message - it even has a theme song if you scroll
> down)
>
>> For me, the two issues I wonder about are:
>>
>> * You were elected as a UMich employee; would folks have voted for you
>> with the added employee hat?
>
> 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. 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. They carefully
> kept the roles separate as will I. Ethics demands this.
>
> 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. The earliest I would
> consider running for the board would be at the end of this year as I
> would like to focus my energies on getting 2.9 released. So at some
> point in the future, the question of how will people vote will be
> answered. 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.
>
> I would point out that long before I was a Blackboard employee, I had
> plenty of detractors. If you read my book, you will see that I do not
> make strategic decisions based on whether it makes people happy or not.
> I was not at all sure that I would be elected to the board when I ran
> back in 2009. Perhaps it was because the people who voted for trusted me
> as a human being and committed community member than University of
> Michigan employee number 72630128. Perhaps 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.
>
>> * I consider Blackboard a competitor to Sakai. How do I feel about
>> serving on a Board with a competitor? Would Pepsi have a Coke employee
>> on it's Board?
>
> Blackboard is not a competitor to Sakai. Blackboard is not Coke to
> Sakai's Pepsi. Blackboard is Coke, Unicon is Pepsi, rSmart is Starbucks,
> and Sakai is Toastmasters where we all get together on a Friday evening
> and give speeches to each other.
>
> "... Thanks Michael, that was indeed an excellent speech about
> "Amazingly Accurate Advanced Alliteration" (applause). But before you
> all go, lets make sure to thank Unicon for providing the snacks for
> tonight's Toastmasters meeting (applause). Next week it's LongSight's
> turn to provide snacks, right? See you all next Friday when Nate will be
> giving a speech on why "Portland is So Damn Awesome"....."
>
> 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. The non-profit
> Sakai Foundation was not formed as the "place where commercial market
> opponents of Blackboard secretly meet meet with angry former Blackboard
> customers to collectively align their attack strategies to achieve
> maximum damage to Blackboard".
>
> Sakai is also not a secret club that meets in a tree house named the
> "Boys Are NOT Allowed Club".
>
> Check the bylaws to see if there is any reference to "plotting" or
> membership rules regarding boys.
>
> http://sakaiproject.org/sites/default/files/Sakai%20Foundation%20Official%20bylaws%20v%202.0.pdf
>
> 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. I challenge you
> to find any passage in the bylaws that pertains to Blackboard that does
> not equally to Unicon or rSmart.
>
> If you look at the board members of IMS (a non-profit industry alliance):
>
> http://www.imsglobal.org/boardofdirectors.html
>
> You see lots of competitors on the same board. It 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.
>
> 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.
>
> http://sakaiproject.org/node/2338
>
> If they can be on the board, then why not Blackboard? If I was on the
> board of directors of one of those actual competitors it would be a
> gigantic issue.
>
> Actually, I was on the board of a company that provides Sakai services
> and *is* a competitor to Blackboard and regularly goes against
> Blackboard in RFQ situations. Earlier this week, I immediately offered
> my resignation to that board when I became a Blackboard employee and the
> board accepted my resignation with regrets. It 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. The board members had become good friends and I already
> miss them and the conversations we would have at board dinners after the
> board meetings were over. The next meeting was in Tahoe and now I can't
> go and see dear friends.
>
> Over the past few years working on IMS standards, I have developed
> friendships at Jenzabar, Desire2Learn, Instructure, and other companies.
> While expect those friendships to continue, there will immediately be a
> natural loss of camaraderie, openness, sense of adventure, and shared
> purpose in those relationships. This loss is because of my new
> association with Blackboard - not because of my long-standing
> association with Sakai.
>
> While I was working in IMS, I was open about my involved in the Sakai
> community - I actively built code in Sakai and often used Sakai as the
> first LMS to run through interoperability tests and in pubic
> demonstrations of new IMS capabilities. I continuously used Sakai to
> help engineer IMS standards. All the commercial participants in IMS
> *knew* I was the "Sakai guy" in addition to the "IMS guy". It was never
> a problem. Never. Desire2Learn 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.
>
> I 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. It is literally only a *few* people *inside* the
> community that see us as "Seal Team 6" forever plotting the end of
> Blackboard. Folks, we don't even have one helicopter.
>
> 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.
>
> Back to my participation on the Sakai board and in the Sakai community,
> both the Sakai and Moodle communities (and foundations) need to be open
> to all that can help and contribute. Open source communities like
> Drupal, OLAT, Joomla, and many others have these commercial-as-evil
> conversations over-and-over-and-over ... ... and-over.
>
> 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.
>
> I wrote about this in a blog post in 2010 when Oracle bought MySql:
>
> http://www.dr-chuck.com/csev-blog/2010/01/why-an-open-source-community-should-not-cede-leadership-to-a-commercial-entity-mysqloracle/
>
> 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. The post *is*
> about a community that thought things would be all right so they let
> others do all the investing. This quote from my blog post seems to apply
> in the current situation:
>
> "Successful open source projects need to make sure to feed and take care
> of their bazaar – their volunteer technical core for the product. Be
> very wary of the “get resources quick” or “get results quick” schemes
> where you cede leadership to something or someone in the cathedral."
>
> Wow - that would seem to be highly critical of me and my recent actions,
> right? Oops! Perhaps I should quickly go back and edit that blog post to
> be more charitable to evil corporations. Not going to happen. I stand
> behind my words.
>
> 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 non-corporate people remain involved in the community and that
> *multiple* corporations are involved in the community. For-profits in
> open source is frankly the driving engine of progress - without
> for-profit involvement, Apache and Linux would not function. I am not
> talking about RedHat because I despise proprietary forks that remove
> talent and resources from the community and then turn around and use
> private funds to market against the community. I am talking about the
> hundreds of other responsible companies in the Linux community like IBM
> that pay employees and let them work freely in an open source community
> as a fraction of their job. Like Google's 20% time.
>
> In Sakai, Universities are great at forming the starting capital to kick
> off new initiatives like CLE and OAE. 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. Foundation staff on the CLE was five people in
> 2005 based mostly on contributions from higher Ed IT. 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. The only remaining *dedicated* release management
> resources moving the Sakai 2.9 release forward come from LongSight and
> Unicon.
>
> I get the sense that all this irrational fear is that somehow Blackboard
> will "take over" Sakai. That is simply not possible as long as others in
> the community remain committed to investing in Sakai. 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. If 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.
>
> There is the saying, "Will the last person leaving the room please turn
> out the lights." In open source, it is a little different, "The last
> organization in the room, owns the software.". My plea to this community
> is to "please stop leaving the room".
>
> It has been said that I can never quit writing a blog post or email
> message while I am ahead. And this time is no different. :)
>
> I would suggest that those who vehemently oppose Backboard's involvement
> ask themselves the following questions. These 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.
>
> - Do I really have a logical reason for my opposition? Is there anything
> in the bylaws or the tenets of open source that discriminates and
> declares one commercial source of resources "evil" and another
> commercial source of resources "good"?
>
> - How can you be opposed to increasing diversity of thinking, ideas and
> approaches? How can you be opposed to having one more source of
> financial and resources to our community? Tell us all a logical reason
> for your position without using the word 'evil'. I seriously doubt you can.
>
> - 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? Have you been part of the
> puffery? Have you withdrawn resources? I am sure you have great reasons
> as to why you withdrew resources - everyone does.
>
> - Does it bother you that about 40 higher educations stopped supporting
> the Sakai Foundation over the past five years, and that it falls to
> Blackboard to pick up their load and move this community forward? Are
> you uncomfortable that higher education cannot take care of its own in
> the long run?
>
> - Are you uncomfortable that for-profit companies *already* provide all
> of the long-term committed resources for the CLE product? Would you
> perhaps feel more comfortable if there were three companies providing
> consistent dedicated resources for the CLE community instead of two?
>
> - Are you uncomfortable knowing that if community members had continued
> to contribute enough resources to maintain the "Sakai commons", I would
> not be working for Blackboard right now?
>
> Welcome to open and community source folks. Resources matter. The
> commons matter. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
>
> I am happy and honored for David Ackerman of New York University to
> challenge me publicly and demand that I explain myself. He and NYU has
> been giving an amazing amount of resources and talent to this community
> (remember the icons on tools - those came from NYU - thank Max - love
> ya!). And in particular David *continues* to give resources and has
> always been willing to *increase* his support when something is
> important. This message is *not* about David Ackerman.
>
> But if you have spent the past five years like an ostrich with your head
> buried in the sand, hoping not to see how bad the commons of the Sakai
> community have become, and the press release Monday forced you to pop
> your head up and say 'holy shit!' - I am *not* sorry. It is about damn
> time you took notice of how so few people are working so hard on your
> behalf and being treated pretty damn poorly by those they faithfully serve.
>
> I took the most pro-community step I could take in putting my
> reputation, friendships, my next board election, and everything I hold
> dear on the line when it seemed like there was no hope of any source of
> resources for the continued survival of of the Sakai CLE and asked
> Blackboard for resources. If you read my book you will see that I have
> many times over done things that were unpopular or even hurt a few
> people's feelings in order to keep this community alive. I assure you
> that this is one more of those things that a year from now - people who
> publicly and privately are cursing me right now - will later come up and
> tell me - "I am amazed at how well this worked out... You were right all
> along."
>
> Those of you who are still saying 'no' to Blackboard resources are
> voting to continue a downward death spiral of the CLE. Listen to this -
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab0E8duvuMs
>
> Given that the CLE is an essential part of the OAE and that it will be
> some time before the OAE can truly fully replace the CLE, I would
> suggest that the premature death of the CLE will lead to failure for OAE
> and as such failure for and of the entire Sakai community. The CLE must
> continue until the OAE is ready to take its place. This is absolutely
> not about OAE versus CLE. This is about investing in CLE to support the OAE.
>
> But of course all is not lost and frankly things are looking pretty
> optimistic in my opinion. Blackboard will make some healthy investments
> in the community in terms of my time, access to Blackboard resources,
> and direct financial contributions to the Foundation and other Sakai
> efforts. CLE will begin to move forward and as OAE matures we will
> gently move from one product to the other as our organizational needs
> dictate.
>
> And frankly, perhaps the best outcome of all is that more than a few
> people might wake up and realize that they have been under-contributing
> to the Sakai Foundation and the Sakai Community (particularly the CLE)
> and out of fear that Blackboard might take over, greatly increase their
> support to make damn sure that whatever Blackboard spends on the commons
> - that the rest of the community is spending enough to insure that
> Blackboard's contributions to the commons remain a fraction of the
> overall community investment.
>
> Sorry if I moved your collective cheese this week. That always hurts.
> But if in the process, I can cause you to look at the cheese and realize
> that it is nearly all gone and kind of dried up, and perhaps that once
> you look at the state of our shared cheese and feel sorry for it - that
> you will bring some more cheese.
>
> Blackboard has brought some cheese for us all to share. Will you bring
> some of your cheese back as well or will you just take what you see as
> your fair share of the remaining cheese and ride off on your high horse
> and curse Blackboard under your breath?
>
> /Chuck
>
> P.S. Keep the questions and challenges coming. I have nothing to hide.
> Ask them all.
>
> P.P.S. When you see me next, I will be proudly wearing a Blackboard
> shirt. But my heart, beating an inch below the logo - has always and
> will always belong to the greater Sakai community. My permanent tattoo
> on my right shoulder includes Sakai, Blackboard, IMS, Desire2Learn,
> LearningObjects, OLAT, Instructure, Moodle and an empty space
> tentatively reserved for ANGEL (I hope). My Sakai tattoo was my first
> and is in the center and the largest of all my tattoos. The other
> tattoos - while important - revolve around Sakai like planets.
>
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