As part of our OpenJoyce.com  presentation at OER13 we did a survey on what people considered “open to mean”. You can see all of the responses on the spreadsheet.

Some of the shorter responses

Visible and public.
The ability to use and share the work freely and without constraint provided you credit the author/source
It’s a buzz word to associate education with equal opportunity. It’s a business angle.
transparent

Those interested in Openness may like some of the arguments presented in our video and sldies

‘a great field was to be opened up in the line of opening up’ OpenJoyce and the Meaning of ‘Open’ from Open Joyce on Vimeo.