Stephen Downes

I started the post thinking "yes" but ended it thinking "no" - favoring, instead, a mandate that 'projects ought to be open'. That is, people working on a publicly funded project should not do this work in secret, but should publicly document the development process as it occurs. This, though, can be done on an individual basis, through personal blogs, postings and websites, and not at all necessarily on a group blog. This allows (with a nod to Paul Walk) some researchers to stay in the background, if that's what they prefer, but still achieves the objective of making public work public. And it also avoids the need for policy and management around an 'official' project blog.