Introduction

As we were designing this course, we asked a few people to let us know what "open" means to them. Their respnses are copied below. You can also find the same data in a Google Spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoYdoYRECznndEJIYXNTQWlmNVc5aG4zWlM2bk5fdGc&usp=sharing  Here's another version of the same spreadsheet that might be easier to read: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AoYdoYRECznndEJIYXNTQWlmNVc5aG4zWlM2bk5fdGc&output=html  With the spreadsheet, you can connect people's answers to their professions.



1. What does "Open" Mean to you?

• Open to me means sharing resources, the ability to remix and free from copyright restrictions. open source as a philosophy promotes a universal access from a free license. Open source refers to a program where source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design. It is often a collaborative effort. 
• non-exclusivity
• Open, in traditional terms means, positively, being open to ideas, experience, evidence, argument, discussion, persuasion, method and reason.  In a more contemporary way, it has meant shared, free of copyright, or with a copyright model that allows sharing, it has meant collaborative and free to modify, and/or distribute. It has also meant copyright violation. It may mean attributed, or unattributed. It has also meant unregulated, as in a totally free and open internet, with all the positives and negatives that brings. And it has also meant privacy altering, as in the information wants to be free arguments that have surrounded aspects of the internet. It has meant adaptable, as in open standards (for plugins, or for connecting to software platforms, software development kits), it has meant a hacker ethic, and it has meant that TCP IP protocols were never copyrighted. It has meant without barriers to entry, in trade, education, and technology more generally, though this has always been more aspiration than reality. In my practice, experience, and background, it has however, generally been accessed, utilised, and valued, insofar as it has provided free to use tools, typically partaken of in spirits an ways which neither mirror nor develop the open ethos in general. 
• Openness mean saying and doing action with responsibilities to others. It should not be miss used with the the slogan 'Do As I Like', but 'Do Others like'. 
• Open means free, uses open course material, material that is licensed in Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA), and all content created is also Attribution Share Alike, is as universally accessible as possible, open to anyone anywhere.
• I think something that is Open is one that is offered to everyone free (libre / gratis) of any limitations be they legal, commercial, political, social, and so on. Watch this video by Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU movement and designer of the General Public License for more < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNBMdDaYhZA > 
• Open means transparency to me. For example, a government which is for the people and by the people needs to be transparent particularly when taxpayers money is involved. That could range from providing access to scientific research to obeying sunshine laws or transparency about monitoring citizens. 
• what makes an institution open is how they manage their finances, the criteria they use to offer bursaries to poor students and how they select the top students in situation where all the students passed. its all about accountability of finance and management and also when recruiting for staff, they should be no bias
• a) Readily accessible, easy to access, free, available without bureaucracy/jumping through hoops. b) Open minds not closed e.g. willingness to listen and genuinely change plans as a result, willingness to hear criticism and suggestions without being defensive
• I am thinking in terms of my (limited) experience with open in higher ed - both open educational resources and open learning (in the sense of open courses). "Open" to me starts with two things: visibility and persistence. What you do must be visible, with no constraints. And some part of it must produce artifacts that are persistent - they can be found over time. I am borrowing "visible and persistent" from work I've read on the design affordances of social technology systems that make them different than other technologies. But those two attributes seem to capture something of the essence of open. But to me open also implies a philosophy or value system - a belief that having activity out in the open yields multiple positive benefits and a commitment to continually work on becoming more accessible and inclusive. The people I know who continue to experiment with open learning and open resources seem to have this philosophy as their underlying motivation: society benefits from sharing ideas and data but there remains a good deal of work to be done to find ways to put this vision into operation.
• The current work I'm involved with takes "open" to mean open licensing for a variety of materials. And of course, the requirement to be open (via open licensing) is stronger where there is public funding for the creation of content. At the same time, openness to me means more than open licensing. "Open" also means greater public access to information about, say, what governments are doing--e.g. "openness" meaning "transparency." In addition, open can also mean "participatory" e.g. the process for contribution and governance of projects and policies is open to input and the possibility of equitable decisionmaking.  
• I don't think open means anything beyond shared differently to not open materials. It is a slightly codified form of file transfer, as opposed to either a piratical or legal form of file transfer. Is open a philosophy? It'd like to be one.
• To me, saying a work is 'open' means that anybody is free to access it, share it, redesign/remix it. Openness blurs the line between producers and consumers of knowledge and art. I think openness has sharing at its heart. It isn't only a dry concept: at the heart of the movement is a community of people who believe that the flow of ideas should not be hindered by proprietary concerns or financial motives.
• In the context of post-secondary online learning, I would be thinking that "open" refers to any resource that is open access, preferably free to access.
• open is when there is access to data and clear understanding of how the data will be used.
• Openness is about inviting participation. The goal of openness should be more people engaging with a practice or a product. The tools of openness--of increasing participation--are varied: they include legal mechanisms like licensing, as well as social and technical approaches like documentation, attribution and sharing resources with appropriate formats. Rather than focusing on openness as an end in itself, I believe it's more powerful to describe what increased participation looks like, as this is to me the ultimate purpose of openness. Take for example publishing. Rather than setting the goal to be x number of books are openly licensed, the goal is instead x number of remixes and new works were created by accessing those open works.
• Have your own points of view, but accepting the other whatever and however you are different.
• To me something that is open:
  • is accessible to everyone, without payment or password
  • is reusable by everyone, without permission or payment
  • is designed for access and reuse, it does not require specific propitiatory tools to use or edit
  • is shareable and is shared.
  • is explicit about these qualities, and explains them (or links to an explanation) in easy-to-understand terms.
• Open in public (government, education, non-profit, etc...) means accessible to as many people as possible with no cost (or very little) to the person accessing the information. Funding is provided by taxes or donations. (not advertiser supported) This means no gathering of personal information, but general information is acceptable. It means the content or procedures are open t be reshared, but not sold, with little more than acknowledgement to the original creator.  The content or procedures can be modified to suit individual needs without asking for specific permission. The remix or new material created should be reshared in the open with the same conditions.
• I am answering within the context of a K-8 setting and developing the idea of having all participants at the school becoming more "open" in terms of their thinking, acting and learning.  I believe that communication and mindset are key to being "open".  Taking risks and knowing where to begin via social media are also key, in my opinion, as you need to be able to access a variety of thoughts from educated individuals globally to gain a better understanding and develop your skills, talents, and collaboration needs.  
• Open, to me, means accessible, low-/no-cost, and grounded in a spirit of collaboration. What makes a work, practice, or institution open is its  obvious invitation to partnerships and the sharing of ideas/information.
• Open and closed can be thought of as binary positions, but I think it's more accurate to see it as a continuum. There are degrees of openness. A college might be called open if it accepts everyone who applies, but tuition and the applications process are still hurdles that close it off to some. Some courses call themselves open but are only open to registrants, and closed to anyone else. When it comes to open education or open learning, I think an open-mindedness on the part of course facilitators is important, so that they're open to learners establishing their own goals and having a hand in defining their own learning paths and assessments - open outcomes/open assessment.
• Something is open when it is made available for all to see. When something is open it can be studied, changed, and improved. In this sense open describes the state or condition of a work, practice, or institution. Open is also a verb, an action. When we talk of opening up education or science we are not just referring to creating resources that have a state of openness. We are talking about the actions, processes, and practices associated with making something open. Open also describes a potential. A work that is open has a different potential than one that is closed. Open educational resources are visible and accessible but they also have an inherent potential to be improved by harnessing the collective wisdom of a community.
• Open to me means as accessible as possible given the time, circumstance, and opportunity.  It means tools that are open sourced as the default given the same as above.  Open means folksonomic.  In other words, again given bounds of reasonableness, I mean driven by the interests of those inside the learning ecosystem.
• I think of the concept of open in the frame of learning to mean low barriers to sharing and learning, and it means finding paths away from corporate entities that seem to be infecting the learning spaces (I'm talking to you, Pearson). Open is a way of thinking of the world as connected spaces, where people share ideas for the benefit of others not for the idea of profit. Open is an attitude, too, in which technology creates pathways instead of stifling those connections.
• For a work to be open, it must either be in the public domain or be openly licensed so anyone may reuse, revise, remix and redistribute the work. A practice is open if it is publicly documented, seeks continuous improvement through critique and feedback and is happy to be supplanted by a more effective practice to reach desired goals / outcomes. An open institution? Read this excellent blog post by Paul Stacey: http://edtechfrontier.com/2011/01/04/the-university-of-open
• To me, open is when people are able to touch or influence an idea or an object, and add their experience to it. Sometimes to better it, and build on it and share it with everyone. And sometimes to keep it for themselves, which is OK, too. Openness involves transparency and versatility and an absence of barriers, which took on a whole new meaning when knowledge sharing went digital. Open things are usable by  (although not always useful for) the next person who comes along, and they are created with that in mind.
• A work, practice, or institution is "open" if they share, reflect, solicit, and use feedback/input on their practices, systems, and structures. In order to be open I think those actions of sharing should be done in an intentional way; that avenues are used to create and maintain  openness and to be open to a diverse audience.
• For co-ops open membership is one of the basic principles http://ica.coop/en/what-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles. That is to prevent a set of members denying membership to people with the same economic relationship to the co-op so that they profit from them. That is one example. More generally open source seems to involve having everything publicly known and useable. Open Government means public decision-making. In courts, public trials are meant to prevent corruption or oppression and arbitrary judgments. Open voting by legislators makes them accountable. The Open Society and its Enemies by Karl Popper - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_popper - contrasted those liberal democratic systems with totalitarian regimes and his ideas form at least one basis for modern ideas of openness. Maybe that was one reason for the fall of the Berlin Wall - openness made scientific development more effective than closed totalitarianis

2. Why do you participate in open culture? Or, why do you think openness is important?

• The study of Open education and open textbooks is an exciting one because it allows the possibility for people to have access to educational material that they may not otherwise be able to afford it.  It is a new way of looking at education at all levels and a move away from elitist academia.
• path-dependency (both)
• The tools it has provided - TCP/IP protocols, and the technologies, pltforms and tools built on this - email, webchat, video calls, online tools and software, twitter, social media ec etc etc are hugely important, and almost unavoidable. Openess in terms of ideas, ideology, experiences and methods is the key characteristic of a non static and creative practice, Interfaces of openess have always been at the heart of change, invention and adaptation. Openness in terms of information exchange gives me access to huge resources, and the potential for recognition, career advancement, and an audience.
• To create freedom, peace, unity and happiness for humanities beyond race, religions, national and so called self centered culture with vision to create 'Global Family' for equal rights, access and dignity for all as mentioned in 'Universal Human Rights Declaration'
• Only by sharing can we solve our common porblems and evolve to a higher level of consiciousness
• Openness is important because it increases the value of what we have through the encouragement of sharing. With this, communities are formed and learning together in groups is promoted which benefits everyone involved.
• I believe openness creates a more functional culture. When allowed to operate without oversight, humans do what all humans do - they use it as a cover to do what they want to do regardless of the impact on the community or country. Humans are very good at coming up with excuses as to why they should be allowed to do whatever they want. Transparency can limit the damage as well as spur growth in investments such as scientific research. 
• openness is important because it helps people around you to know what kind of a person you are and how you value openess
• Accountability, checks and balances, freedom, challenging authority, preventing abuse, publicising abuse.
• On a personal level, I find it intellectually stimulating to work on open education innovations. But it is really tied to my belief system. I want to live in a society that doesn't just say it values diversity and inclusiveness but works at it through actions. I see the open education movement as one of those critical actions.
• We are all always building on the contributions of others when we create something--we depend on having access to it for progress and for creativity. And when we limit access to it, or selectively enforce restrictions based on whether something is threatening our business models, we take away more from society than we're giving to it. 
• I think it's the right thing to do. I want to share to increase the expectation of others to share too. Openness is important in general because the public should have access to (and information about how they can use) the resources they help fund the creation of. Openness can help set up the conditions for discovery and solving problems down the road, even if I can't see the direct benefit all the time. This is important too. 
• Open culture is a bit of a weird term. I share because I believe it to be a good thing. Is sharing innately open? Not so sure. 
• I consider open culture to be an evidence. It's both an altruistic motive and a selfish one that guide me: I want to be able to share with others what I produce, what I think, what's valuable to me and in return, I want to be able to dialogue with others around the world who also have ideas, knowledge and talents to share. I think openness is key to the advancement of knowledge.
• Partially for cost-effectiveness, but also because I think sharing is very important in the context I work in, for instructional designers, for instructors and for students.  We do our best work when we can share and work together.
• Freedom of choice and transparency of activities.
• I believe that the ultimate goal of openness is participation. The reason participation is important is that it's essential to our shared human endeavors, be they in fields of culture, education, science, politics, etc. Openness is a set of tools that invite more people to participate, and I see my role as helping 1) communities build new tools of openness and 2) inviting new people to discover and use these tools. In this way, I hope to make a small contribution in empowering more people to participate in our society.
• That is a necessity to live in a mutual understanding world.
• Because the only culture is open culture - anything with meaning has a shared meaning.
• I work for the public as an educator. The work I do should be accessible to the public. I think it helps other educators and becomes a part of the "commons". 
• I am a LEARNER and I want to continue to develop my skills and connections to enhance the opportunity for others.  In being open I can show the benefits and maybe help others along a path that maybe never would take to open themselves up to a whole new way of access and learning that will benefit not only themselves but the educational field itself.  Students can and should have a voice and they too need to included in the "open" culture for today's learning.
• I participate in open culture to be part of larger conversations and the possibility of collaborations that might otherwise not be possible.
• Because sharing is caring? Participating in the open gets my name out there, hopefully in a positive sense. It is a way of networking that could open up opportunities, learning or otherwise. But being a lurker or leech will only get me so far - having something to say or something to offer is what makes me a valuable node.
• Openness maximizes the potential inherent in things and people. Openness creates an environment with greater equality, diversity, and  freedom. Openness contributes to the betterment of the world and in so doing generates positive feelings toward self and others.
• Openness is a countervailing force.  It is using duck-duck-go as your preferred browser because as much as Google tells us it is not evil, I prefer my own eyes to their lying press releases.  It is all about being aware and uncomfortable about Google whole stable of unique tools  while simultaneously active about searching for alternatives that are workable.  Openness is a value that keeps the bottom line, the quarterly return and shareholders' interests in balance.  
• I participate in a lot of open spaces because I feel like I have a lot to learn from others and a bit to share from my own experiences. As a teacher, these spaces validate my own desire to connect beyond my classroom, and to be part of something larger than myself, my school, my own community (although those physical spaces keep me grounded).
• I think openness is important because: (a) we live in a global, networked society and the free flow of information, knowledge and content is critical for all individuals to have a fair chance at contributing through work and culture - which leads to more stable and happier societies; (b) efficient use of limited resources increases access and equality for more people (to education, data, science, etc.): as such - publicly funded resources should be openly licensed resources; and (c) there are always more smart people outside your institution / town / country than there are within - so it's important we share local knowledge globally and re-purpose global ideas and works locally.
• Open means I get to borrow from our collective knowledge and share my own, too. It doesn't take long for people to understand how generous and altruistic open culture is, and that they're participating in something much bigger than themselves. I got hooked by open culture after working with other people in the community who are some of the most talented and interesting people around.
• I think openness is important in order to reflect and grow, to allow various thoughts and perspectives to influence your work. I participate to hear and see other perspectives and others' work in order to learn and to improve my own, as well as to contribute whatever I can to the work of other people. 
• It represents a collective endeavour in opposition to our very individualistic culture. It's also a serious attempt to spread power and resources more widely. That is a really important counterbalance to the dominance of the big multinational corporations and big bureaucracies. It is a way for ordinary people to rebuild their own resources now that trade unions and other forms of popular association have waned. It encourages compassion and solidarity and it's fun. It builds teams and the skills of working in teams.

3. If possible, and if you would like, please provide a link to a work, project, or initiative you think exemplifies your definition of "open". You can provide more than one if you wish.

• BC Campus is currently doing an Open Textbook initiative. Coders work to create Moodle plugins and assist the learning community. 
• Links...not so much. Renaissance Italy, Elizabethan England, email at CERN, the strands of Linux, Apache web servers, the non patenting of the polio vaccine, trolling, memes, reverse search phonebooks, open office, hacking and publishing credit card details, the computer mouse, bit torrent, the scientific method...
• Democracy - saving lives, saving nations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-tFcZLyG7M
• http://blog.nwp.org/clmooc/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
• http://info.cern.ch/
• http://www.sciencehackday.org/ 
• http://www.linfo.org/bsdlicense.html
• http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html 
• https://github.com/ 
• http://foiamachine.org/
• http://www.nfoic.org/foi-center
• https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing-public-access-results-scientific-research
• http://www.minorityrights.org/8072/evaluations/evaluations.html
• ETMOOC: http://etmooc.org/
• http://wikipedia.org
• http://okfn.org
• http://xiph.org
• http://www.doleta.gov/taaccct/
• Wikipedia, P2PU of course!!, Creative Commons (with all its imperfections...)
• Increasingly, I'm interested in physical spaces and live events as ways to demonstrate the power of openness. Humans know how to communicate with one another in the same room, so the technical hurdles to participation are lower. However, facilitating such experiences can be challenging, because they usually don't follow a conventional event agenda. So, until participatory formats are more widespread, live events continue to be a rich and "cutting-edge" place to explore openness in practice. In this way, I've learned a lot from the SF-based NGO, Aspiration Tech, and in particular the facilitation style of Allen Gunn. This is a small organization that is contributing greatly to helping more people understand openness and increase participation: http://aspirationtech.org/
• https://oersynth.pbworks.com/w/page/29595671/OER%20Synthesis%20and%20Evaluation%20Project
• http://www.ooe13.org 
• #etmooc itself is one of the great examples of "open," for me; Wikipedia is another great example
• I work with interns at my university to provide a blog for our English majors.  Here it is:  http://english.blog.wku.edu/  It is open because WordPress has an open API.  It is open because it is driven by student interests. It is open because WordPress is a free tool even though the infrastructure for connecting to it is mostly not free (internet access, computer access, knowledge access).
• The Making Learning Connected MOOC (collaboration, not course) is a prime example of this open culture: http://blog.nwp.org/clmooc/
• Another is the P2PU site: https://p2pu.org/en/
• http://wikieducator.org/OER_university/Home
• It makes sense to point to the first open project I was involved in: Mozilla's Open Badges. http://openbadges.org/ The technical system for issuing these badges costs nothing, is fully open source and customizable and is well-structured to support sharing over the web.  Anyone, anywhere can create, issue, and earn badges that represent any kind of skill or experience. There are practically no limits to what you can do with them, which is what interested me to begin with.
• It's important to add the established co-operative movement to the open source/open knowledge/wikipedia movements so that they are stronger together and learn from each other: http://www.thenews.coop/open
•