The 5Rs of Openness
In his 2007 blog, David Wiley described the “Four Rs of Open Content”[8].
This was followed seven years later by the fifth R.[9] The elegant simplicity of these five statements has grabbed the attention of open educators everywhere and has become a standard and easy-to-remember method for describing how open licences work. The five Rs are:
- Retain: the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
- Reuse: the right to use the content in a wide range of ways, e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video
- Revise: the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself, e.g., translate the content into another language
- Remix: the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new, e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup
- Redistribute: the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others, e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend
