OER and User Pay
Thanks to Jeff Rubenstein for a thoughtful comment . I agree that the division between 'content' and 'paper + ink' isn't always the best way to approach the discussion, and should note here that it was generated as a metaphor to frame a response to a commonly raised issue. Jeff addresses the same issue, I think, but in a much more nuanced way. Here, to me, is the main point: On 2021-02-26 9:29 a.m., Jeff Rubenstein wrote: And those systems will necessarily have a cost that *someone* has to pay. Staying with the nuanced analysis, we should recognize that while 'cost' has economic connotations, there are many flavours of 'cost' (Greg McVerry, for example, mentioned personal or cultural burdens that may be borne by marginalized community or people in specific geographic regions). And that's important, because there's a certain perspective that expresses the view that the *end-user* should pay some of (in a purely market econ
