David Wiley comments on the role of commercial actors in the open space in light of yesterday's revelation that Microsoft has joined the Linux Foundation. He writes, "The open source software side of the open house has absolutely no issue with commercial entities using or contributing to open source software." That's not exactly true, but the dissenting voices have long since been drowned out. Anyhow, it's not the same in the content world, but the fear of educators, he writes, is unjustified. "There's no excuse for judging an organization based on whether it was incorporated as a for-profit or non-profit entity." Maybe, but that's not how commercial use is defined. It's when you slap a pricetag on a learning resource and prevent them from accessing it otherwise that people begin to question the practice. And remember, in most countries, education, unlike software development, is a public good. Which is why we resist the commercialization of learning resources.
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