The OSS Watch and OpenSpires Projects

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The OSS Watch and OpenSpires Projects

• Rowan Wilson, Legal and Research Officer

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• Part of the HEA/JISC-funded Open Educational
  Resources Programme
• Two main objectives
• Release audio and video podcasts as OER (open
  content)
• Investigate and disseminate the institutional
  implication of OER release

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• Our approach
• Built on the success of podcasts.ox.ac.uk and
  iTunesU widespread participation providing a
  pool of academics to approach
• Inhabit an existing content production workflow
  (iTunesU) and adapted it to make OER release a
  low-effort option (including IPR process)
• Encouraged devolved model of content production
  but supported the majority of recordings from the
  podcasting service

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• Achievements so far
• 8 lecture series (around 65-70 hours)
• 30 sets of other resources (including seminars,
  interviews, conference presentations and panel
  discussions).
• Over 180 media items are currently available as
  open content through http//podcasts.ox.ac.uk/open
  spires.html
• Over 100 Oxford academics and visiting have
  signed theOpenSpires (Creative Commons) licence
• Subject areas already covered include politics,
  economics, environmental change, business,
  research ethics, medicine, physics, English,
  classics, art history, philosophy ....

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• OSS Watch
• Founded in 2003 in response to JISC call
• Drafted the JISCs Open Source Policy
• Two successful subsequent bids
• Uniquely, we are non-advocacy

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OSS Watch provides unbiased advice and
guidance on the use, development, and licensing
of free and open source software. OSS Watch is
funded by the JISC and its services are available
free-of-charge to UK higher and further
education. If you want to find out more about
open source software, we're the people to
ask. OSS Watch is an advisory service so we can
help your project build an open development
community but we cannot write your code for
you.

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• We provide
• Quality-assured reusable (CC BY-SA) content on
  FOSS topics (www.oss-watch.ac.uk)
• Free consultancy on open development, community
  building, software licensing and FOSS procurement
  to HE and FE sectors
• Events (Transfer Summit, Keble College, Oxford,
  24-25 June)
• Strategic projects

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• What is Free and Open Source Software?
• Software that the user has the right to adapt
  and distribute
• Access to the source code
• Often available at minimal or no cost
• Permits commercial reuse
• Often maintained and developed by a community
• Increasingly high public profile and market
  share (Linux, Apache httpd, Firefox,
  OpenOffice.org, Xensource)
• Basis of later open content licences like
  Creative Commons

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• Whats the connection?
• Ethically-motivated beginnings
• FOSS had principles of education and individual
  freedom at its root
• A response to perceived enclosure of intellectual
  commons
• General licensing models
• An offer open to all
• No explicit agreement necessary
• The centrality of community
• Pooling of resources to benefit and educate

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• How do they compare?
• Open content is less than ten years old
• OER efforts are less than 3 years old
• FOSS is between 20-30 years old (albeit with a
  definite growth spurt in the last 12)

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• How do they compare?
• Ethically-motivated beginnings
• FOSS has developed beyond purely ethically-driven
  agenda into a compelling and pragmatic model for
  software development
• General licensing models
• FOSS community has always rejected limitations on
  commercial use
• FOSS licences have proliferated wildly
• The centrality of community
• FOSS projects have sited themselves somewhere
  between two approaches to community broadcast or
  collaborate

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• The Broadcast Model
• Closed process of development
• Owned by a single institution or closed
  consortium
• Throwing it over the wall when its done
• Many academic projects take this approach
• External contributions are generally not expected
  (and are perhaps unwelcome)
• Large and successful FOSS projects like
  OpenOffice also use this model
• This model is used by most OER projects,
  including ours

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• The Collaborate Model
• Public discussion of development roadmap
• Project often sits outside contributor
  organisations, perhaps in a NFP or charitable
  foundation
• Releases are built in public
• External contributions are encouraged
• Large and successful FOSS projects like Apache
  httpd use this model
• OSS Watch favours this approach for software
  projects for sustainability reasons

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• Sustainability benefits of the Collaborate model
  for software
• Project history is public, design decisions
  documented
• Under the bus factor greatly reduced
• External bodies wanting to commit effort or
  funding have a convenient was of assessing the
  public impact of the projects work up to that
  point

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• Possible benefits of the Collaborate model for
  OER
• Reuse can be easier to track
• Duplication of effort can be reduced
• For well-known projects rewards and recognition
  for contributors is generated automatically by
  association, with contributions publicly
  trackable
• Projects both generate useful material and teach
  collaborative working methods

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• However
• Collaboration requires additional effort
• OSS Watch strategic projects
• IP rights must be handled in a disciplined way
• Project processes must be documented and stuck to
• Design decision-making process
• How contributions are made
• How disagreements are settled
• Perhaps software is different
• Easier to identify and agree on quality criteria?
• Perhaps teachers are just different

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http//www.flossproject.org/papers/20060614/Rishab
GHOSH-gartner2.pdf
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• Egocentrism
• Related to the previously topic, is reuse by
  authors, as opposed to nonauthors, so extensive
  simply because they know what exists in their own
  content, or is there a bias to use ones own work
  (i.e., a not-created-here attitude even among
  those who extol the virtue of reuse)? The fact
  that a person is creating a collection within an
  OER repository might indicate a greater
  willingness to use someone elses creation, but
  it certainly is not guaranteed. It is possible
  that the person using an OER is motivated by the
  free hosting of content or the proliferation
  possibilities for their own content.
• Sean Duncan, "Patterns of Learning Object Reuse
  in the Connexions Repository,"
• Connexions, June 2, 2009, http//cnx.org/content/
  m23642/1.3/

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• In conclusion
• Truly collaborative open development in software
  improves project sustainability
• Potentially OER projects could gain additional
  benefits for both their participants and sponsors
  if they embraced collaborative open development
  models
• Potentially code is different

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• More information
• http//openspires.oucs.ox.ac.uk/
• http//www.oss-watch.ac.uk/
• rowan.wilson_at_oucs.ox.ac.uk
• Thank you!