Horner Transcript 9
From OER Commons Wiki
Interview with FHSST Founder Mark Horner
Movie 9
What does it feel like to author and then give up control of the work?
I think it's very difficult for people to give up their work, especially into the public domain, where anybody can do anything with it, and there are issues with people making money off it, so that's always something I try to discuss with people if they want to contribute to the project, because they need to be aware of what it means to produce an open document, and knowing that other people might even be able to make money off of it, that's really quite something. The rationale I usually use is that if the other person takes the material, modifies it, tries to sell it -- well they can sell it of course-- they have to make that material available under the same license. In pure financial terms we could take that source they've developed and sell it at cost and undermine their business model. That pacifies most people who are just worried about the money.
But it is quite something to give something up and have other people modify it. I think there's a lot of room for seeding the production of better material by getting the ball rolling. I wrote a lot of the original stuff in the FHSST textbook and what's there now is much better is much better than what I wrote, and I haven't contributed to the book specifically in a very long time.
Do your contributions to an open, adaptable work live on?
One of the other things I like trying to tell people is that if you write an open educational resource, like a textbook or something like that, it's something which can live on as a contribution to the community, even if you choose to remove yourself from the community and stop contributing. I'm not saying that people going out and doing volunteer work in the community in an educational way is a bad thing, but I think there's the possibility of making a larger impact by writing really good material which persists beyond your contribution directly to the community.
