James & Simon, this is great. I am really enjoying the direction that this discussion is taking. As I was reading through the comments I was thinking a bit about the practical limitations and flaws of the US intellectual property regime. I too am not a lawyer or a self-taught expert on IP law, but it does seem that the notion of ownership and commercialization of intellectual assets that were created with the intent to be used openly for the public good is quite contentious. That is, the dialog can become pretty polarized pretty quickly, which in my estimation is good. How the debate, particularly around the Non-Commercial restriction is framed is important because respectful but critical dialog will be the quickest way of addressing the practical problem that James identified in his post.
So I remain uncertain how to address this challenge: if most of my colleagues only feel comfortableto share their work on a non-commercial basis, then is it better to encourage them to share theirwork (and hence ultimately improve education) rather than trying to persuade them to changetheir mind about allowing commercial use (and run the risk of them not sharing if they are notpersuaded)?
James, although you are not a lawyer, you are a psychologist and I would like your thoughts on this phenomena. Let's just assume that most of our colleagues who contribute to “Open Source Teaching” by contributing learning designs or content to the commons are doing so for the “public good.” Let's also assume that our colleagues would like the impact that their contribution has on “Open Source Teaching” (and the common good) to be the greatest possible. Furthermore let's assume that the more frequently used the contributions are the greater the impact and public good. Why would it matter if the impact is magnified by commercial use? It seems to me that if somebody adds some value to the creation and then uses a market mechanism to propagate the benefit, while also respecting the Share Alike component of the license, the impact of “Open Source Teaching” will be greatest and our colleagues' interests are met.
This is sort of a long-winded way of indicating that my observations point to less of a problem with commercial organizations making money on Open Source Teaching resources, than having those resources not being used very much and their value being under realized. The NC restriction might not be at the root of this, in fact, I would guess that right now there are other issues around the culture of western education and technology standards, that are equally important issues, but I think that the NC restriction is a potential barrier in that it makes the license more complex and potentially confusing. It seems to me that “Commercial” use is a term that has some ambiguity and might not get to the nub of what folks are concerned about and why they decided to contribute to the public good in the first place.
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