There’s an important point about the the forthcoming Sakai 3 that probably has escaped most casual observers. It is close to a ground-up rewrite. Sakai 3 is to Sakai 2 as Mac OS X was to Mac OS 9, in the following ways:
- The technological heart (or kernel) of the new version is completely different from the old version.
- That kernel leapfrogs many current-generation architectures (which are really aging legacy architectures, for the most part) for software of its category.
- Some of the applications that run on the old version will be able to run on the new version with some modest to moderate development.
- Other applications on the old system will have to be completely re-implemented on the new system.
- Still other applications could run on the new system with some tweaking (and probably will for a couple of versions), but they will seem awkward in the new environment until they are re-implemented.
- Users who have lots of apps that they want to carry over in the old environment will probably want to run that old environment together with the new one in some sort of co-existence mode. New adoptees will care less about that and skip co-existence mode, provided that the new system has the apps that they need.
- At some point, co-existence mode will go away and adoptees will have to migrate to the new system to stay current. How current adoptees respond to this transition will be largely a function of how well the migration path is done, but some users who are attached to the way the old system worked will have trouble letting go regardless.
- The first release is likely to have some very impressive capabilities as well as some feature gaps and rough edges. It will be suitable for full replacement use by some, for piloting by others, while still others will want to wait for another release or two. (Whether the 2010 milestone release of Sakai 3 is more like OS X 10.0 or 10.1 in this respect remains to be seen.)
- The new kernel will likely enable accelerated innovation and impressive progress from release to release, with feature gaps getting filled quickly and new capabilities that nobody has seen before coming too.
I think there is a good chance that, within a few releases, Sakai 3 will be a trend-setter in its category much like Mac OS X is.
Well said, Michael.. I luv a good analogy
You’re no Steve Jobs
I really loved MacOS 8, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and on. I did not like MacOS 9, 10.0, or 10.1. I particularly disliked Mac OS 9 because they broke everything that worked in Mac OS 8 to “prepare us for MacOS 10.x” without making Mac OS 9 any better.
During the 9, 10.0, and 10.1 phase I was blissfully working on Windows – when I came back to 10.2 I was the happiest guy in the world because I liked UNIX – and really did not miss much of Mac OS 8 at all. When I was forced to use Mac OS 9 – I did miss Mac OS 8 a lot and wished the whole world went back to Mac OS 8. And now I actually find where Mac OS 10.x still has remaining homage to Mac OS 9 annoying.
Translation: Don’t break what is working in the name of the next generation – by force-feeding next generation technology into the previous generation. Simply patiently work on the next generation until it is simply better and then people will flock to it in droves – and new people who did not find the previous generation appealing will find the next generation appealing.
Michael, you have found the analogy we all understand (even if non-Mac users) for the Sakai 2 to Sakai 3 move.
To add to that, I’ve been pondering the co-existence mode explained in the recent Sakai 3 webinar I attended. Not knowing the timing, I had to ask, did they get that from Blackboard? Or did Blackboard get that from them? Both now have NG product plans involving a co-existence / bridge/ migration phase.
Laura, my guess is that they both got the idea from elsewhere. Both Apple and Microsoft have done something like this in different ways during major OS architecture overhauls. It’s a pretty common strategy. To the degree that one LMS got ideas from the other in this area, the Blackboard NG effort precedes the Sakai 3 effort (for the most part), so it would be more likely that Sakai is learning from Blackboard in this particular case.