There are a lot of discussions going on in the OER community about what should be considered “open.” This starts with licensing issues with many considering the no derivatives or non-commercial licenses being too restrictive. In addition, there are format issues revolving around non-accessible formats (e.g. PDFs, etc.). Then there are issues of adaptability, language, language level, etc.
While we will probably never agree on a definition of what is “open,” perhaps we can agree on what is not open. Clearly, content that is licensed under a traditional all rights reserved copyright is not open. Similarly, content that is licensed under terms that do not permit third-party hosting or dissemination (even in a non-derivative form) cannot be said to be open.
While this may seem to be obvious, many OER repositories contain such works.
I understand that the Internet is all about numbers, but more is not always better. The OER community will not establish itself as a transformative force in education if it succumbs to the temptation to include everything under the sun in OER repositories so that there are x-million items attracting x-million eyeballs.
Let’s start the consensus-building process on what is “open” by agreeing on what is not open and removing the “open” label from it. Or better yet, let’s get the content providers to clarify or change their licenses so that they are truly open.