What *is* “Open”? by David Lippman, instructor at Pierce College
At the department meeting Friday, there was some confusion about
what being an “open textbook” means. The words “open source”,
“open books”, “open educational resources, and “open courseware”
are tossed around a lot nowadays, so I thought I’d make some
effort to clear up what these terms mean. The notion of “open”
began with software. Traditional software does not allow you see
how the internals of the software works. Open source software
changes that and allows the user to inspect and even change the
source code that makes the software run. Additionally, open
source software gives users the permission to then share their
modified versions of the software with others. This idea of
giving people additional rights eventually made its way to other
creative works, including educational work. Traditional
copyright is “all rights reserved”, meaning only the owner is
allowed to make changes to or distribute the work. This is too
restrictive sometimes,