Open content

Open content (in English open content, analogy of open source) is a concept coined by David Wiley (University of Utah, United States) in 1998 to describe any content (articles, drawings, audio, video, etc.) published under a non-restrictive license and in a format that explicitly allows its copying, distribution and modification.

The open content concept is heir to the philosophy of copyleft and Free Software, which has as an example its GNU Free Documentation License, under which this encyclopedia is published. Although open content initially provided its own license model, the OpenContent License (OPL, 1998), currently the Open Content Organization advises the use of Creative Commons license models, inspired by the GNU GPL. Creative Commons was established in 2002 by some North American and British professors and professionals, and was led by Professor Lawrence Lessig (Stanford University, United States).

Currently, open content is being disseminated and used mainly in the field of Higher Education, where the transfer of knowledge with the least restrictions is critical. If open content has gained a prominent place in academic culture, it is because it responds to three important conditions for sharing educational resources: the didactic context, the technology used to make them reusable, and the free disposal of intellectual property.

Some open content projects

• Nupedia
• Open Directory Project
• Wikipedia
• The Worldwide Lexicon
• Free Encyclopedia