Page - 67 - in Radical Solutions and Open Science - An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education

5 WhoBenefits fromthePublicGood… 71 license, thatpermitno-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptationand redistribution byothers (UNESCO,2019). TheOERmovement has joined other efforts on the opening up of information, culture, and knowledge. Platforms such asWikipedia andYouTube have become synonymouswith shared knowledge creation and the democratization of access to educationalcontent.CreativeCommons(CC),asetof free licenses thathasquickly becometheglobalstandardforfreeculture,andalmostsynonymouswith“openness”, is the license suit that is most used by these and other services in a converging movementbetweenplatformexpansionandgrowthofopen licensing initiatives. According to official CCdata, the number of resourcesmade availablewith its licenseshasgrownfrom140millionin2006toover1billionin2016.Suchexpansion atfirstglancepointstoahugeincreaseinsize,capillarization,andpracticesinformed by the idea of OER.Notwithstanding some criticism of themethodology used to calculate thenumberofworkswithCClicenses (Downes,2015), themovementhas indeedgrown,which is evidentnotonly fromits sheernumberof cultural artifacts, but also from the number of licensed open access journals usingCC licenses, and the political movement fostered byOER initiatives around the world.1 In Brazil, the public sector (at the federal, state,municipal, and institutional levels alike) has beenmobilized toenablepublicpolicies inOER,withsignificant successes (Amiel, Gonsales,&Sebriam,2018). In fact, ina recent survey(Amiel&Soares,2016), the state seems tobe, at least inLatinAmerica, themaincatalyst in theconstructionof projects, policies, and initiatives tomakeeducational resourcesavailable. In light of these principles and goals, it can be hard to find someone who is against the ideaof“open”.But towhatextentsuchanidea,aswellas themovement it has set intomotion, is free of tensions and unimpeded by roadblocks?What are the possible gaps and breaches that could be found in thesemovements’multiple possibilities of implementation, debate, and elaboration?And towhat extent could thesemethods and tools serve as tools of liberationwhile they promote practices whichareundesirable to specificeducational communities? In this paper, we focus on these issues by examining the practices of OER. In doing so,wefindourselves obliged to bring out thewaydifferent areas associated with openness relate to each other, and to address issues usually ignored by those who(likeus)advocate forOER.Webeginourdiscussionbydiscussing theconcept of “open” indifferent spheres and thegeneral context of thebattle surrounding the usageoftheterm.WefollowwithbriefnotesontheoriginoftheconceptofOERand how theOERmovement fits—fromahistorical perspective—into the discourse of educational improvementsthroughtechnologiesandtechniques,and—inthecurrent scenario—intothephenomenaof theappropriationofeducationactivitiesbyprivate oligopolies.Wepoint out someBrazilian dilemmas in the implementation ofOER inpublicpolicies andendupbymentioning someprogramsandprojects that point us to fruitfulpaths. 1Asourceofmultiplepolicy initiatives is theOERWorldMap(http://www.oerworldmap.org).