Until the end of this year, our license at FWK was CC-BY-NC-SA with an open access version (Web). As of 1/1/13, our license will have to change, since there will be no “open access” version.
The “open purists” tolerated us up until now, but that’s certain to change when the calendar changes to 2013. Their commitment to open as a movement won’t allow them to consider us a partner. We are too “closed” in their minds, and perhaps they are right. No open access = not open. My opinion is that staunch purism damages the movement, and that they risk being relegated to the margins if they aren’t open to a range of creative solutions.
Our goal is not to support the open movement—it’s to reform a broken textbook industry. Sustainability leads to better quality content. “Freemium” is unsustainable as a business model in a closed ecosystem such as this. In my mind, we have proven that now.
In academic work, free works are still a niche phenomenon, owing to the difficulty and cost of maintaining a fully qualified peer review process.
We at FWK are beholden to our customers, not to the open purists. The customers who understand what we are trying to do will continue to support us. They are realistic about the unsettling alternative—unfettered price increases forced upon them by the corporate textbook cartel. We may represent the only real resistance to that dark future.
So, can we still call ourselves open if we don’t offer an open access version?
Probably, no.
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Disclaimer: All views or opinions expressed on this site are solely those of the author and do not represent those of the author’s employer, Flat World Knowledge.