Open, Free, Libre?

David Wiley 2008

It must be very satisfying to know that you took a significant first step and made a difference to the discourse around education and the sharing of resources. Despite David's modest presentation of his coining of the term "OpenContent" and the launch of the first license and written principles aimed at protecting and sharing academic content (OPL and OP/L), his initiative made a difference.
While he acknowledges the flaws of his initial efforts and the importance of the Creative Commons licenses developed by Larry Lessig and others, he was a leader at a time when many academics were focused on protecting their work, not on sharing it.
I'm still uncertain about the long term effect of supporting open licensing as opposed to free (libre) approaches. While I admire the mavericks of the Free Software Foundation, the supporters of Richard Stallman and open source itself, I'm doubtful that their model will fit the realities that many teachers and students face or the level of interest they have in engaging with the issue. I think that the free radicals (pun intended ;-) have a critical role to play in ensuring that the corporations like Microsoft, Apple, etc. don't end up owning and controlling our use of technologies and increasingly our access to knowledge and sharing of information.
David's description of the limitations (protections?) of open content resonate for me. Although those protections mean that his license doesn't qualify as a "copyleft" license (if I understood that correctly), but I do think it is an approach that acknowledges the concerns of the producers of the educational content - that they have some say in how their work is shared and used. Many academics I've spoken to as I've tried to promote the concept of "open" are willing to support the concept of a "right to education" but they are concerned that their hard work will be misconstrued, misused or appropriated to make someone else richer. CC licenses allow each individual to determine their level of comfort in sharing - they are customizable. The fact that they too have flaws is unfortunate but I have every confidence that we'll eventually get it right. How can we not with all those brilliant minds at Harvard focused on improvement?
Where I have concerns with David's approach is his apparent focus on textbooks. I think the idea that the textbook is too often an excuse for lazy teaching. It seems to encourage (support?) a traditional, lecture-based approach to teaching and an underlying assumptions of a static model of knowledge. In our rapidly changing world, this approach has limited value. It doesn't appeal to students nor does it seem to serve their needs or the needs of the economy or of everyday life. Certainly when I look around to see who is successful in the world, it rarely seems to be persons who rely on textbooks. And the exemplary instructors I've known are the ones out there pushing the envelope, engaging in real world learning and using the power of technologies and connectivities to connect with other experts and learners to grow the shared knowledge around subjects of interest and concern. There are better methods of collecting and sharing information than a textbook and we're starting to see all kinds of good examples. Doesn't mean there is not a role for textbooks; I would predict thought that they'll be increasingly unimportant in the future of education. P.S. David recently participated in the Change MOOC that Stephen Downes and George Siemens have been organizing. He posted a brief description with some additional links to open projects he's participated in - About David

P'sing off a hacker can be amazingly productive...

So, I've worked my way through the videos and readings for open content. Richard Stallman was not gnu to me (get it???!) but somehow I missed learning about Linus Torvald as I was working my way through my courses in Edtech at UBC. As an educator who was trying to be responsible about not infringing copyright when producing learning activities and presentations for teaching, I found the GNU license for images and other content a life-saver. Although I am an admirer of the CC-license, the GNU one is just really straightforward and I am really comfortable in the open exchange of ideas and resources (not trying to get rich, just trying to make the teaching and learning exchange more interesting for teacher and students!)
I have to say that I've found this in-depth coverage of hacker culture somewhat disturbing. Not so much the history of the development of free software and open source (I noticed that the incredibly mind-numbingly picky, self-interested analysis of the sharing and collaborative building happens when people start trying to make serious money from this stuff) but Cory Doctorow's presentation at the 28c3 Congress.

The Revolution OS video gave me a much broader understanding of how open source developed and the role of big players that I've only experienced peripherally before (Red Hat, Apache and Mozilla's Firefox). But I have to say I went away thinking less of many of them. The egos that many of the participants exhibited as they explained the significance of their actions reminded me of Sheldon and the guys on Big Bang Theory in that there are these incredibly bright but often quite narrow people who seem very disconnected from society. As you might guess from my post title, it seemed to me that many of them were motivated by pique - especially Richard Stallman. At least he was honest about the petty frustration that drove him out of the comfortable academic interchange at MIT and motivated him to create a movement. Amazing to think so much can come from such a seemingly insignificant series of events.
Cory Doctorow identified some risks that I hadn't even been aware of in his presentation at 28c3 "The coming war on general computation" and now I'm leaving the whole open versus corporate software and copyright and optimal length of copyright and DRM etc behind. Now I'm just worried about how we can possibly stop governments, private corporations, institutions and control freaks from building and deploying computer-based technologies that control (or could control) what we do. My paranoid tendencies have been re-awakened. And it didn't help to listen to a news report about the growing use of unmanned drones in Canada! Did you know that they used one to judge crowd sizes during the Wall Street protest movements (and record everyone who was there I bet).
Maybe it's time to get unplugged and disconnect...but then how will I know who's watching?