Last week OEN reported on a post by George Siemens in which he was critical of open textbook publisher Flat World Knowledge. Yesterday Wiley posted a response and Siemens posted a comment in reply. Wiley followed up with an additional post, and then requested that his readers write about why they choose to be “open.” From the Wiley’s first response:
I would argue that using the existing system as infrastructure is the most brilliant part of the FWK strategy (disclosure: I am the Chief Openness Officer of FWK). Because FWK recognizes and works within the existing context, it is actually able to affect real change. Over 400 faculty and 40,000 students will use openly licensed, DRM-free FWK textbooks this fall – enabling extensive, legal faculty localization of materials and saving students and their parents over $3 million.
