There's an elegantly articulated post in the Blackboard blog about educational choice and diversity and an interesting thread of conversation among the Sakai community commenting on it. Though the post is superficially supportive of choice, openness, and diversity, it seems to me that it's more a marketing attempt to lay claim to the platform on which scholarly technologies will run. In other words, choice and diversity as long as you get to it through the Blackboard platform and pay them for it.  

The commentary from the Sakai community have been diverse. Some have asked good questions like "how can we ensure open collaboration that will benefit all." Others have noted that the Sakai community is already well on it's way to delivering the platform that Bb is marketing but has yet to really commit to (note the disclaimer at the end of the post). Brad Wheeler, CIO at Indiana University made some very lucid points about the purposeful design of the Sakai community and our IP that permits Blackboard to use Sakai software to accomplish its goals, and about the divergence of their goals from those of the education community, and probably most importantly about where the education community should focus it's attention.   

It seems to me that the education community, and particularly the Sakai community is better positioned to deliver and sustain the platform. We have a proven ability to innovate and have been on the platform course for some time. Further, it seems in the community's best interest to keep the platform open and encourage those interested (commercial and non-commercial) to innovate and build on it. A key motivation for many of the universities who have chosen the Sakai path is to regain control over their destiny on the technology that is so core to delivering on their mission. Relegating the platform to a monopoly just isn't consistent with this goal.

Blackboard realizes that if they are to achieve their revenue growth and profit goals they must do more than sell course management systems. They clearly have their sights set on owning the platform and monetizing anything that runs on it. The Sakai community also has it's sights set on becoming the platform and doing it in a way that is open and accessible to everyone: truly providing choice and diversity as Blackboard's marketing positions their ProjectNG. I think this puts their goals for the platform at odds with the Sakai community's goals for the platform because if it's "owned" (by Bb) then institutions will continue to have insufficient control over their own destiny.

In my estimation, Sakai's challenge won't be developing and sustaining the best platform on which to build and connect educational software and content. Our challenge will be competing with Blackboard's powerful marketing machine.  We'll need to be cautious as we proceed to make sure we don't help feed the machine in ways that prevent the market at large from understanding their options.