Many principles of open source are similar to those of OER but one key difference is that the ‘source code’ – the text that defines the software – is freely available (Opensource.org, 2007).

Source code is developed collaboratively: ‘version control’ tools allow contributions from different authors to be managed and reconciled.

This may help address those barriers:

• Permanence: Source code is ‘portable’ - it can easily be copied
• Quality: Collaboration reduces the skills required of any single author
• Time: Collaboration reduces the time required of any single author

Collaboration helps make OER development sustainable (Wolfenden, 2008) so this makes sense.