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 other countries using this as a basis. The need to expand access to higher education to those who could not access the conventional model became something many governments recognised, and the reputation of the OU for high-​­quality teaching material and good learning experience made the approach respectable. Many of the aims of such open universities, to democratise learning and reach excluded groups, would r­e-​­emerge with the arrival of MOOCs (e.g. Koller 2012).

Note that there is no particular stress on free access in this interpretation. Education was to be paid for by the respective government, and open universities were closely allied to whatever form of widening participation they wished to adopt. The emphasis was often on affordable education, but before the internet, the other forms of openness were seen as more significant. It was with open source that ‘open’ and ‘free’ began to be linked or used synonymously.

Open Source and Free Software

In the 1970s, Richard Stallman, a computer scientist at MIT, became frustrated with the control over computer systems at his institution, and this frustration would lead to a lifelong campaign about the rights associated with software. In 1983 he started the GNU project to develop a rival operating software system to Unix, which would allow users to adapt it as they saw fit. The code for GNU was released openly, in contrast to the standard practice of releasing compiled code, which users cannot access or modify. He saw early on that licenses were the key to the success of the project and championed the copyleft (in contrast with copyright) approach, that allowed users to make changes as long as they acknowledged the original work (Williams 2002). As we shall see,