I had yet to see O’Reilly’s post; thanks for the link, and the OER recontextualization (albeit within the limitations of the analogy).

One line of Tim’s original post also seems worth highlighting: “But peer-to-peer architectures aren’t as important as open standards and protocols.”

Access to source code, paired with true data portability via open standards, as part of a federated/distributed publishing system of open content — these elements together are necessary to allow open content to flourish. While exposing content for public consumption via a URL is a great start, it still bears more of a resemblance to a textbook model (ie, like AOL or any other content silo) than truly open content.

RE: “but many changes to an open educational resource cannot be judged objectively” — this is very true, and there is a better than even chance (heck, maybe even a certainty) that many changes to OER’s won’t improve them. But, some will, and given how easy it is to allow for content to move from point A to point B it doesn’t make sense not to allow it. This is also a great argument for pairing free and easy distribution/republishing with tightly controlled permissions/edit rights over the authoritative source of data.