From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Open content, coined by analogy with "open source", describes any kind of creative published in a format that explicitly allows the copying and the modifying of the information by anyone; not exclusively by a closed organization, firm or individual. The largest open content project is Wikipedia.^[1]

Contents 1 Technical Definition 2 History of Open-Content 2.1 Common-Content 2.2 Open Access 3 Open-content Search Engines 4 Licenses 5 See also 6 External links 6.1 Major Open content repositories and directories

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 an open license like one of the Creative Commons licenses.

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 Open-Content 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 free software movement were led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).^{[citation needed]} One such application is their Open Courseware.

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.

Open access refers to a special category of material, consisting of freely available published peer-reviewed journal articles.

With the increased interest in open content, many universities have started offering online video/audio courses to the general public, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University. This has resulted in a great increase in 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.

• 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

• Free content
• Open source

• IOSN Open Content e-Primer from their FOSS e-Primers Section
• "Community Created Content; Law, Business and Policy" Hietanen, Oksanen and Välimäki
• "A Guide To Open Content Licences," Lawrence Liang
• Creative Commons - The open content idea and creative works
• ibiblio - The open content idea as a library, from a project by UNC-Chapel Hill
• Learning the lesson: open content licensing - A history of open content from Linux Weekly News
• Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals
• Open Knowledge Definition: Defining the Open in Open Data, Open Content and Open Information - set of principles from the Open Knowledge Foundation

• Connexions - A global open-content repository started by Rice University
• OER Commons - network of open teaching and learning materials, with ratings and reviews
• Google Directory - Open Content
• OpenLearn - free and open educational resources from The Open University
• Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) - directory/registry of open data/content packages and projects
• UNESCO Open Training Platform - network for international development issues