Hi all,
RedSevenOne, I agree with your sentiments of generating and sharing knowledge for the sake of science and society. Great to see that there are still a few of us around.
I concede that my context working to widen access to education in the developing world is very different to many folk reading this blog. I'm somewhat critical of a pay-per-page model if you want to get a hard copy. For the overwhelming majority of people in the developing world, Internet connectivity is an expensive luxury. If “knowledge” resources are free - this freedom should extend to being able to reuse, modify and redistribute the resource without restriction including the option of generating your own print version.
This is not to say that those of us supporting the freedom culture are against the freedom to earn a living from free content. In fact we should encourage this. In my view we should promote publishers and local business entrepreneurs to add value through services and expanding distribution channels using free content. (Not unlike the RedHat Linux model).
By way of example, WikiEducator is currently funding a project to develop an open source extension for MediaWiki software for users to generate their own basket of selected articles and by clicking on a button - the software will spit out a local pdf version on the desktop. This is pretty significant because any free content project using Mediawiki will be able to implement this technology. Depending on whether we can generate further funding from the international donor community, we aim to extend this functionality to export content in Open Office format which would enable faculty to customise free content without restriction. Think about it - the English Wikipedia has more than 2 million articles, and with this pdf feature we will widen access to the largest encyclopedia in the history of humankind in print format for those who don't have access to the Internet - without the need to pay for a hard copy! So reluctant and conservative faculty are free to stick with closed proprietary content. Others will embrace the idea of working on the development of free content - that's our mission at WikiEducator 1 - to build a free curriculum by 2015.
Ken - I think that you're absolutely right, we need to think creatively about the barriers associated with shifting the “culture” of the academy regarding free content. Personally - I don't think competition is a bad thing in higher education - it does contribute to quality. Turning to the business world - the co-opitition model has been pretty successful. The notion of collaborating in order to compete better is not an alien business concept - Why are we reluctant to embrace this in the education sector? There is a strong value proposition in the free content model to produce learning resources faster, better and cheaper when compared to the closed model. A free content license permits individual institutions to add there own unique services to differentiate themselves in a highly competitive education sector. In my view, this is healthy.
The free software movement is a very “competitive” endeavour. Anyone is free to fork a software development and if they succeed in building better code that serves the needs of users, the community will grow. Forks that don't do things better will not survive. A natural eco-system with strong routes in competitive behaviour. Similarly - I suspect that this will evolve in the free content movement.
I'm very optimistic about the prospects of the free content movement. I already see early signs of the critical mass required to sustain this global endeavour. We have the leverage principle on our side – for example, we don't need thousands of faculty to build a free curriculum for a freshman course in education or chemistry. Ten or fifteen dedicated educators around the world could do the job. My point is that a free curriculum is certainly plausible. The strategic question for most organisations should be - How will the free curriculum impact on our existing business models ?
Ken - thanks for keeping this initiative going - An engaging and compelling blog.
- 727 reads
