I recently toyed around with Canvas[1] and found it to be really stable and feature-rich without that messy feeling that Blackboard or Moodle give you. What were the motivations to develop this system instead of enhancing or forking another lms?
It didn't started as a LMS, actually started as a Academic Management System. We needed a system to control all the academic administrative operations. Later we developed the LMS system connected with the AMS.
Right now we are on the process of replacing our old LMS with a new one. We have very cool ideas that we are developing right now (timeline based view for the students, tools for interactive presentations, transparent support for MOOCs, etc.)