February 2007 — News
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Update: Sakai, Blackboard Comment on Patent Pledge
He added, "We are a member of this community. We all come to work everyday at Blackboard because we want to improve teaching and learning worldwide using online technologies. That's what this is all about. And in that respect, our mission is the same as the rest of the community. This patent stuff is kind of side noise, and we hate to see it become a distraction. And with this pledge, we're confident we'll move beyond that and everyone will be better [off] for it."
The Sakai/EDUCAUSE joint statement
Sakai and EDUCAUSE, responding to Blackboard's announcement, released a formal statement Feb. 1 as well. "It was a joint statement, and there certainly are compromises within the statement because there are compromises in the situation," Sakai's Severence told us. However, he said, "I ... think it's really exciting that Sakai and the EDUCAUSE board came up with a joint statement. I think it's very impressive. It really shows ... how much people care about this issue. And the bringing together of the two boards to come up with a joint statement was actually straightforward because the boards had been thinking along similar lines."
The complete text of that response follows.
The boards of directors of the Sakai Foundation and of EDUCAUSE recognize the patent pledge announced on February 1, 2007, by Blackboard as a step in a more positive direction for the community, to the extent that it offers some comfort to a portion of the academic community that uses open source or homegrown systems. In the pledge, Blackboard states that it will not assert certain patents against open source or home grown systems bundled with no proprietary software. We particularly welcome the inclusion of pending patents, the clarification on the commercial support, customization, hosting or maintenance of open source systems, and the worldwide nature of Blackboard’s pledge. We also appreciate the willingness of Blackboard to continue with frank and direct dialogue with our two organizations and with other higher education representatives and groups to work toward addressing these problems of community concern.
Although Blackboard has included in the pledge many named open source initiatives, regardless of whether they incorporate proprietary elements in their applications, Blackboard has also reserved rights to assert its patents against other providers of such systems that are "bundled" with proprietary code. We remain concerned that this bundling language introduces legal and technical complexity and uncertainty which will be inhibitive in this arena of development.
As a result, the Sakai Foundation and EDUCAUSE find it difficult to give the wholehearted endorsement we had hoped might be possible. Some of Sakai's commercial partners and valued members of the open source community will not be protected under this pledge. Furthermore, EDUCAUSE and Sakai worked to gain a pledge that Blackboard would never take legal action for infringement against a college or university using another competing product. While Blackboard ultimately agrees that such actions are not in its best interest from a customer relations viewpoint, it could not agree for reasons related to its existing legal case. Our organizations will remain vigilant on this point as protecting our member institutions is of top priority.
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