Open content
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Open content, coined by analogy with "open source" describes any kind of creative work including articles, pictures, audio, and video that is published in a format that explicitly allows the copying of the information. Technically, it is royalty free, share alike and may or may not allow commercial redistribution. Content can be either in the public domain or under a license like one of the Creative Commons licenses. The term is also used to emphasize content that can be modified by anyone; not exclusively by a closed organization, firm or individual.
It is possible that the first documented case of Open Content was with the Royal Society, where they aspired toward information sharing across the globe as a public enterprise. The commonality is difficult to dismiss. The words "open content" were first put together in this context by David Wiley, then a graduate student at Brigham Young University, who founded the OpenContent project and put together the first content-specific (non-software) license in 1998 with input from Eric Raymond, Tim O'Reilly, and others.
Like the debate between the titles "open source" and "free software", some open content materials can also be described as free content, although technically they describe different things. For example, the Open Directory Project is open content but is not free content. The main difference between licenses is the definition of freedom; some licenses attempt to maximize the freedom of all potential recipients in the future while others maximize the freedom of the initial recipient. Much of the ideals of the open source movement was led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). One such application is their Open Courseware.
With the rise in popularity of Open Content, many universities have started offering online video/audio courses to the general public. This has resulted in a plethora of open content providers. Keeping track of all of them would be no ordinary task for a user whose only interest is to find a course on a specific topic. This led to the birth of Open Content search engines. Currently, sites like OpenContentOnline and OCWFinder allow users to search for open content provided by multiple universities.
The related term common content is occasionally used to refer to Creative Commons-licensed works. This takes after the Common Content project, which is an attempt to collect as many such works as possible.
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[edit] Licenses
- Creative Commons License (11 versions)
- Design Science License
- Free Creations License
- GNU Free Documentation License
- Open Content License
- Open Directory Project License used by Open Directory Project
- Open Gaming License - License of the Open Gaming Foundation, as drafted by Wizards of the Coast.
- Open Publication License - License for the Open Content Project
[edit] See also
- Open research
- Collaborative writing
- Copyleft
- Free content
- Free software movement
- List of open-content projects
- Open access
- Open publishing
- Public domain
- Public domain image resources
- Public domain resources
- Open design
- Open catalogue
- MIT OpenCourseWare
- Open ICEcat
- indymedia
[edit] External links
- OER Commons - a single point of access through which educators, students, and all learners can search, browse, evaluate, download, and discuss open educational resources (OER) that are freely available online.
- OpenLearn - free and open educational resources from The Open University
- Open-of-course - open content courses and tutorials
- Open Knowledge Definition - set of principles defining open knowledge (including content)
- metacollab.net - an open content collaborative research project focusing on collaboration.
- alqua.com, Free documents
- Free Web Content - Articles Factory Premium content service delivering current and archived articles for a wide variety of life topics. Includes tools for a self-organizing library.
- Creative Commons - The open content idea and creative works
- Connexions - A global open-content repository open to contributions from everyone
- Free Curricula Center - Producing textbooks free for all to use, copy, and modify
- This Google search attempts to find documents with GFDL license grant boilerplate.
- "A Guide To Open Content Licences," Lawrence Liang, a systematic survey of open content licenses
- Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals
- ibiblio - The open content idea as a library
- Licenses for Documentation at gnu.org
- locarecords.com, Open Source Record Label
- OpenContent.org
- "Open Content Licenses," Jan Newmarch, http://jan.netcomp.monash.edu.au
- Open Content resources and mailing list at OpenContentList.com
- Open directory category: Open Content
- Public Library of Science
- Directory of open access journals
- Open J-Gate Article Index to 3,500+ open access journals
- Read Print - includes many free public domain books
- Writings - Open Content - speech on Open Content with relation to DRM
- opencontentalliance
- Open Content - Das Urheberrecht als Grenze und Ausblick (educa)
- OpenContent Initiative - School district inititiave to build standards-based Open Content curriculum (2800 + pages and growing)
- Learning the lesson: open content licensing - A history of open content from Linux Weekly News
- Wiki - An open source wiki featuring information regarding the Open Content Era
- MIT OpenCourseWare
- Free Game Content Project - a wiki collecting all informations about open content games
- The Mutopia Project - Free music scores.
- Open Revision - Free database of questions, user editable
- The economics of open content - Conference proceedings (2006) on the economics of open content
- OpenEffort.com - online collaboration tool for creating and publishing content
[edit] Credit
The list of open content projects are partly based on The Institutional Design of Open Source Programming on Firstmondayda:Åbent indhold de:Freie Inhalte es:Contenido abierto fo:Opið innihald fr:Contenu libre ko:오픈컨텐트 it:Open content he:תוכן שיתופי kl:Ammasunik imalik hu:Nyílt tartalom ms:Kandungan terbuka nl:Open content ja:オープンコンテント no:Åpent innhold pl:Wolna dokumentacja pt:Conteúdo aberto simple:Open content sv:Wikipedia:Öppet innehåll zh:内容开放

