What is the definition of open content?

Open content is information, such as documents, images and audio or video presentations, that may be freely and rightfully reproduced, edited, excerpted, developed and republished.

The terms "open content" and "open educational sources" describe any copyrightable work that is either in the public domain or licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and permanent authority to engage in the 5R activities:

1. Retain: Make, own, and manage a copy of the resource (e.g., download and save your own copy)
2. Revise: Edit, readjust, and modify your copy of the resource (e.g., transmute into another language)
3. Remix: Combine your original or scanned copy of the resource with other existing material to build something new (e.g., make a mashup)
4. Reuse: Use your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource openly (e.g., on a website, in a performance, in a class)
5. Redistribute: Share copies of your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource with others (e.g., post a copy online or give one to a colleague)

Legal Requirements and Restrictions

While a free and perpetual grant of the 5R permissions by means of an "open license" qualifies a productive work to be described as open content or an open educational resource, many open licenses place requirements (e.g., mandating that derivative works adopt a certain license) and restrictions (e.g., prohibiting "commercial" use) on users as a condition of the grant of the 5R permissions. The inclusion of requirements and restrictions in open licenses make open content and OER less open than they would be out of these requirements and restrictions.

There is controversy in the community about which requirements and limitations should never, sometimes, or always be included in open licenses. For example, Creative Commons, the most important provider of open licenses for content, offers licenses that prohibit commercial use. While some in the community believe there are important use cases where the noncommercial restriction is desirable, many in the community fully study and eschew the non-commercial restriction.

As another example, Wikipedia, one of the most important collections of open content, requires all derivative works to adopt a specific license - CC BY SA. MIT OpenCourseWare, another of the most important collections of open content, requires all derivative works to adopt a specific license - CC BY NC SA. While each site clearly believes that the ShareAlike demand promotes its particular use case, the requirement makes the sites' content incompatible in an esoteric way that intelligent, well-meaning people can easily miss.

Generally speaking, while the choice by open content publishers to use licenses that include requirements and restrictions can optimize their ability to accomplish their own local goals, the choice typically harms the global goals of the broader open content community.

Make Open Content Less Open

While open licenses provide users with legal permission to engage in the 5R activities, many open-content publishers make technical choices that prevent a user's ability to engage in those same activities. The ALMS Framework provides a way of thinking about those technical choices and understanding the degree to which they enable or impede a user's ability to engage in the 5R activities permitted by open licenses. Specifically, the ALMS Framework encourages us to ask questions in four categories:

Access to Editing Tools

It's the open content published in a format that can only be revised or remixed using tools that are extremely expensive (e.g., 3DS MAX). It's the open content published in an exotic format that can only be revised or remixed using tools that run on an obscure or discontinued platform (e.g., OS/2). It's the open content published in a format that can be changed or remixed using tools that are freely available and run on all major platforms (e.g., OpenOffice).

Level of Expertise Required

It's the open content published in a format that requires a significant amount of technical expertise to revise or remix (e.g., Blender). It's the open content published in a format that requires the smallest level of technical expertise to revise or remix (e.g., Word).

Meaningfully Editable

It's the open content published in a manner that makes its content essentially impossible to revise or remix (e.g., a scanned image of a written document). It's the open content published in a manner making its content easy to revise or remix (e.g., a text file).

Self-Sourced

It's the format favoured for consuming the open content the same format favoured for revising or remixing the open content (e.g., HTML). It's the format preferred for consuming the open content different from the format favoured for revising or remixing the open content (e.g. Flash FLA vs SWF).