Nate Angellraised by wolves, accidental open-source evangelist

I have been watching Instructure and it's move to offer part of its Canvas learning platform under an AGPLv3 open source license with great interest.

First, Canvas is a compelling product, with some great usabilty and features. I also welcome Instructure's move to a (forked?) open source path, which I think helps evolve platform options and the marketplace in useful ways.

I am unconvinced, however, by a main thread Instructure CEO Josh Coates takes up in his recent blog post on Instructure's open source strategy.

Josh says that software owned by a single commercial entity is preferable because "critical bug fixes, integration and innovation only come out of the folks that own the technology." I think history has shown that Josh's assertion is not true. Many open and community source projects that do not have a single commercial entity at their core consistently demonstrate high rates of maintenance, innovation, and integration. At the same time, what might be called "corporate" open source offerings do not always generate the qualities Josh describes.

Underneath this issue is an even more fundamental perspective that I also question: that there are only two paths of software ownership/development, which Josh defines in his question: "would you rather have a closed system owned by a commercial entity, or an open system not owned by anyone?" Josh goes on to suggest Instructure's open source strategy offers "the best of both worlds."

I'm excited to preview the integration we've been working on at rSmart between Sakai and Google Docs. We expect to release this integration in the upcoming 2.7.1 version of our rSmart Sakai CLE distribution, and once we see it in action, contribute the integration to the broader Sakai community. Embedded here is a 7.5 minute demo of the integration that covers the basic functionality (you can also grab the fullblown movie). I've also attached an early case study rSmart produced in collaboration with Google on this functionality.

What makes this integration so cool is now Sakai users can harness the rich authoring and collaboration capabilities of Google Docs, and use Sakai to distribute their documents to other Sakai users, like students, classmates, or other collaborators. The integraton works with your personal Google user account, or if your institution uses Google Apps, your institutional Google identity.

This is a stellar example of all the new integrations we're seeing with the Sakai platform. Look to try out the integration yourself soon on rSmart's mySakai environment, where we'll turn it on once our 2.7.1 version is released.

With Nate Angell (rSmart), Noah Botimer (University of Michigan), Eli Cochran (University of California, Berkeley), Michael Feldstein (Oracle), Clay Fenlason (Georgia Institute of Technology, Sakai Foundation), David Goodrum (Indiana University), John Lewis (Unicon), Stephen Marquard (University of Cape Town), John Norman (University of Cambridge), Max Whitney (New York University).

The Sakai Product Council acts on behalf of the broad Sakai community to ensure the exceptional quality and cohesiveness of Sakai product releases in their support of varied teaching, research and collaboration needs. It does this formally by determining those projects which will go into a release, and informally by advising projects as they progress from R&D to production-ready maturity. The Product Council will undertake its work: by employing the expertise of its members, through direct consultation with experts in the community, with reference to best practices for technology, pedagogy and standards, by establishing and communicating clear and objective criteria. You can read an interim report of Product Council activity in 2009 and goals for 2010 on the Sakai wiki. Join us at the Sakai conference to meet representatives from the Council, hear a current update of our activity and goals, and give us your input on our work to date and going forward.

I was deeply honored to be named a 2010 Sakai Fellow—mostly because fellowship bestows a coveted black "ninja" sakaiger (pictured)—but also because I read my fellowship as evidence that the Sakai community recognizes and values all forms of contribution to our collaborative work.

Three out of 2010's six Sakai fellows have made their substantial contributions primarily in areas of actual technology development: Oxford's Matthew Buckett, Cape Town's David Horwitz, and Michigan's Gonzalo Silverio. I can't stress enough the high value and significance of these three fellows' work.

The other three 2010 Sakai fellows—Indiana's David Goodrum, Michigan's Steve Lonn, and myself—have made our primary contributions in what might seem "softer" areas of Sakai: coordination, communication, thought-work, and research. The very tangible outcomes of David's leadership in the formulation of the Sakai Learning Capabilities and Steve's continued focus on the invaluable research of Sakai's Multi-Institutional Survey Initiative are far better evidence than any of my own contributions of the value of work outside the Sakai codebase.

Unlike others who suggest a strong difference between what might be called the "write" and "read" communities within Sakai, I see this year's Sakai fellowships as testimony to my view that such a dichotomy is not so useful. Instead I see read/write activities in open communities as a continuum that generates a virtuous circle of outcomes: new reading generating new writing and vice versa, until the distinction between reading and writing becomes robustly fuzzy.

All of us in the Sakai community are readers and writers at different times, of different texts, inspiring and supporting our whole collaborative endeavor.

Thank you Sakai!