The scrutiny that George notes is important, and the critical eye will always be with us as long as we have the right to speak freely. And while there is clearly wisdom in encouraging folks to evaluate their actions with respect to philosophies, I also fear overthinking new ideas–whittling away at them with disparate knives of criticism until they are nothing more than a sliver, something with no potential but to be discarded.

The strength of your argument (that empirical evidence for the FWK model exceeds that of collaboratively produced texts) also reveals our differing philosophical views on the subject. I’m arguing for ideological considerations. You are arguing for implementation. I’m suggesting that FWK will succeed because it does exactly what you (and FWK press releases) state: lots of people will save lots of money. While I don’t agree that FWK will have “larger direct impact on higher education affordability this fall than all of the previous open educational resources projects have had combined” (do you include Wikipedia or other soft open resources? What about open access journals like IRRODL?), I fully agree that the impact will be significant. Many students will be singing FWK’s praises this fall.

But that’s not my point. My point is that openness is the virtue to be pursued (I feel silly making this statement to you – you’ve done more for this “movement” than almost anyone else has). Not sorta-openness. Or sorta-affordable openness. Full openness to download, edit, reuse, add media, etc. is the target. Settling for affordable quasi-openness may sell cheaper textbooks and may delay more foundational change.

If the peer production model is not yet capable of producing textbooks, my question is: why not? Benkler suggests it’s a function of coherence of subject matter and that contributions to sites like wikipedia work because they (the contribution) is granular and not interconnected. The value point in education, as a result, is in integrating and connecting resources into a coherent narrative. Benkler, FWK, and you would argue that this is not well managed by networks or communities. Instead, focused efforts in small groups of 1-4 people will write textbooks of better quality than groups of 20-100 will.

Which raises questions such as:

*What are our organizational models missing when individuals are not capable of collaborating in writing complex resources (like textbooks)? Is it about incentives? Could we, have networks of educators write textbooks? Let’s say a group of psychologist profs got together and decided to write a full text for first year students and posted resources in a wiki. Each prof could then extract the resources for their own use or direct link to the wiki in their courses. If FWK is trying “trying to disrupt the status quo as much as we can as quickly as we can” why not experiment in serving as an infrastructure role in openness at this self-organizing level with profs?

* Should we still be thinking in textbooks? What is it about textbooks that is so valuable that we transition the concept fully into the digital world? Maybe we should first abandon the textbook model.

You ask an important question: why are collaboratively produced text better (virtuous). I would argue all texts are, by virtue of reuse of ideas generated by others in the long lineage of science and the academy, collaborative. Collaboratively produced resources, in the wikieducator sense, are better suited for reuse because, in theory at least, no one has a motive – such as profit – other than to produce learning resources. Does FWK permit one student in a class to download a book and then distribute copies to other classmates without fee? Can an educator download the book, copy and paste into a wiki and then edit it to customize the text? Even the small reading window for reading a text online is an illustration of control exerted to influence purchasing the text. If a group/network collaborates on the text, then (again) in theory, they wouldn’t need to play “soft control” games of this nature. Pure openness would be the target.

In my view, if it (research, course content) comes from the public purse it belongs to the public. If it’s privately funded, it’s a different matter. FWK is a private entity that is in business to make a profit. Nothing in the world wrong with that. But is it the best way for academics to approach opening up content/curricular resources?

David, whether you lay claim to the title or not, you are the (or at least “an”) ideological leader of openness in education. Which is why I was a bit surprised to see you accept the FWK model. I’m sure there are considerations I’m not aware of, or philosophical views that are perhaps not as strident as might be expected from a leading figure. To me, it seems to be trying to balance openness with economics…and the economic model has precedence (i.e. charges for downloads of digital versions). It’s a “having your cake and eating it too” situation (off topic: I never understood that metaphor – I know what it’s supposed to mean, but what’s the point of having cake in the first place if you have no intention of eating it?? Anyway, I use it here in its societal meaning). Your work around advancing openness, by nature of this role, will be subject to scrutiny. If you have a view on copyright or commercial reuse, it will be criticized. If you have a view on how to increase the impact of openness at the school or university level, it will be scrutinized. Is it fair? No. But that’s a burden that comes with the role.

George