The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded OKI, and the partners and I believe even the people are many of the same that were working on OKI. I've also heard that the original OKI funding period is coming to an end. My guess is that this effort is the substitute.
One thing we can learn from the OKI experience. It got A LOT of market share. Even at times when there was no code out there, there was a huge OKI hype. Everyone was asking about OKI. For some reason - maybe the combination of schools or the press from the Andrew W. Mello Foundation, what they say seems to be received with excitement.
