The Divide Over 'Open': ED's Open Licensing Rule Causes Conflict on Campus

The comments are in, and it appears that the campus is divided.

This past fall, the U.S. Department of Education announced its intention to require recipients of competitive grants (an estimated $2.8 billion in fiscal year 2015) to openly license the intellectual property created with those funds. This open licensing rule — which would impact a large number of programs, though just a small slice of the Department’s $67.1 billion in annual appropriations — was put forward in a notice of proposed rulemaking in November, with public comments due by December 18th.