Open Educational Resources (OER) offer great potential for reducing the cost of learning and allowing everyone to benefit from and contribute to an open, educational commons.

But as a part-time educator, OER feature very rarely in my work, and those I do encounter are often out-of-date.

Meanwhile, as a full-time web developer, I am surrounded by ‘open source’ software. I use open source tools, code libraries and programming languages, all maintained by active communities.

Why is one ‘open’ model seemingly so much more successful than the other?