Free vs. Open

 I'm taking a class called "Introduction to Open Education" and what in my mind was a somewhat simple, and very needed, concept of "Education for all!" is becoming a very complex web of interconnected pieces that make Education for all less straightfoward than I was originally conceiving it to be. (Also, yes, I have a tendency to write very long sentences. You can thank Spanish for that.)

While I have very strong feelings and opinions in favor of education that is accessible to everyone, I am still forming my opinions on what Free and Open education mean. Fro my opinions to be respectable, they need to be informed; and I am beginning this journey of learning about what free and/or open education mean. 

Last week, I read Richard Stallman's article "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software." I found it very compelling, especially as someone who loves words and can talk about words and their nuanced meanings for hours (who am I kidding? For days, weeks, even years!) One of Stallman's arguments is that "open" misses the point because it doesn't put the emphasis on freedom. He sees a big disadvantage in people bringing their own ideas, some of them reductive, about what the term "open" is referring to. You can go to the article to read his ideas in detail. I'm not going to do that here. 

The only thing that I'll add to the conversation today is that people bringing their own ideas or preconceptions of what words mean and how they are being used is inevitable. I think it would be naive to expect the systematization of a term of phrase to solve this "problem" once and for all. Languages, and their words, are living things that will constantly change, and evolve (some may even say "devolve") and transform and expand and reduce. We probably will need to establish our working definitions every single time that we use those terms in a new setting. And we need to remain open to keep defining them, and explaining what we mean when we use them, and allowing them to expand and grow as ours worlds expand and grow.