[Oer-community] In fields like OER -- Shouldn't we eat our own dog food?

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Jennie,

<Jennie said>

"Well in briefly, in reply, why is the OER Foundation charging for its
information? Doesn't sound like your trying to share very well with others,
or eating your own Dog Food, but trying to sell and make profit off of what
is being given freely by other donor institutions."

In response.

Jennie, your statement is incorrect -- the OER Foundation does NOT charge
for its information. We are a charitable organisation.

The copyright of all content developed by educators is owned by the creators
and openly licensed under free content licenses meeting the free cultural
works definition.  The OER Foundation runs the worlds largest free training
program to develop wiki skills in the formal education sector and we have
provided learning opportunities to thousands of educators from more the 130
different countries -- for free. The OER Foundation has never charged any
learner or user for access to OERs hosted on our websites and we do not
permit advertising on our websites.

As a charitable organisation we rely on donations, membership contributions
and donor grants to cover the costs of the technology infrastructure (all
open source software) and to pay the facilitators who run free training
sessions for any educator who wants to learn how to develop OER
collaboratively.  In the absence of these donations -- we will not be able
to support educators and educational institutions in building sustainable
OER ecosystems.

To find out more about what we do, download a copy of our previous annual
report<http://oerfoundation.org/files/OERF-Report_2009-Pre-Audit-version.pdf>--
its' free  (no cost and libre).

Cheers
Wayne



-- 
Wayne Mackintosh <http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg>, Ph.D.
Director OER Foundation <http://www.oerfoundation.org/>
Director, International Centre for Open Education,
Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
Founder and elected Community Council Member,
Wikieducator<http://www.wikieducator.org/>
Mobile +64 21 2436 380
Skype: WGMNZ1
Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg
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