Hello All,

Someone has to say it, it may as well be me.

I'm not talking about the MOOCs context particularly, but CC licensed educational content, aka OER. So I'm talking here about the difference between CC's licences that count as gratis and those that count as libre. I'm glad that this is becoming an explicit debate as I've seen it surfacing and it's helpful to draw out these assumptions.

I would like to remind everyone that there is an argument that gratis is still a good thing.
And in my personal view, gratis (i.e basically free and copyable), is often good enough.
I know that's terribly unfashionable :-D

Why? Well ... I think that for content providers libre is a bigger ask than gratis: it means giving more rights to users.
I think giving people access is valuable in its own right. And as a smaller requirement on content providers, it's more likely to happen. So I look at the big picture and what I think is this: I'd rather see 50% of educational materials made available gratis than 10% made available libre whilst other content providers are scared off by "OER librans" criticising their choice of CC licence. I know that the NC and ND take away the ability of users to do certain things. But it's a trade off I accept.

I don't accept that openness is a black and white issue.

It would be so healthy if the librans could respect the gratins
(even if that makes it sound like a truce between astrology and potatoes :-) )


Amber