The Sakai Project is a community source software development effort to design, build and deploy a new Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) for higher education. The Project began in January, 2004.

Goals
The Sakai Project's primary goal is to deliver the Sakai application framework and associated CMS tools and components that are designed to work together.  These components are for course management, and, as an augmentation of the original CMS model, they also support research collaboration.  The software is being designed to be competitive with the best CMSs available.

The tools are being built by designers, software architects and developers at different institutions, using an experimental variation of an open source development model called the community source model (see below).  To provide a support system for institutions that want to be involved in the Sakai Project, either by adopting Sakai tools or by developing tools for inter-institutional portability, the Sakai Project  has also formed the Sakai Educational Partners Program (SEPP) and the Sakai Commercial Affiliates Program.

Origins
The Sakai Project has its origins at the University of Michigan and Indiana University, where both universities independently began open source efforts to replicate and enhance the functionality of their existing CMSs .  Soon after, MIT and Stanford joined in and, along with the Open Knowledge Initiaitive (OKI) and the uPortal consoritum, and a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation, they formed the Sakai Project. 

Community Source Development Model
The Sakai Project follows what is called the community source model, which is an extension to the already successful, economically feasible, open source movement forged by projects such as Apache, Linux, and Mozilla. Based on the goal of addressing the common and unique needs of multiple institutions. community source relies more on defined roles, responsibilities, and funded commitments by community members, than some open source development models.

Current Progress
To date, the Sakai Project has put out three major software releases (1.0, 1.5 and 2.0), developed an Educational Partner's Program which now has around  80 members around the world with 14+ active discussion groups  and five commercial affiliates, organized three highly successful SEPP conferences,  and successfully demonstrated a  model for community source software development among colleges and universities.  

Future
In the future, the Sakai Project expects to continue its effort to build out its interoperable framework and develop many new tools and extensions. In addition, the Partner's Program will continue to grow and the development model used for Sakai is expected to become more broadly applicable.