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Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8
One quick comment . . . . I notice that that company sells most of what they offer. But doesn't "open" imply that they make all of the things (ebooks, artwork, sound recordings, whatever) available for free? That holds true for all other "open" organizations that I know about.
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The Open University (OU)
say that:
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We promote educational opportunity and social justice by providing high-quality university education to all who wish to realise their ambitions and fulfil their potential.
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It's "open" in the sense of being open to anyone with the academic ability to complete a degree. OU courses are distance courses, done during the student's spare time. All that said, they do make plenty of material available for free. Way back when, before the web, the BBC would broadcast OU programmes (they may still do), and anyone was free to watch them.
Also, the term "open" doesn't necessarily mean free of charge. In most contexts where I've seen it used, it's meant that the user can access the contents and modify them if they wish. In ebook terms, I'd consider a non-DRM'd ePub file to be "open", since I can easily look at and modify the files contained within it.