There is a great overview of the history and current status of the Open CourseWare (OCW) project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Of interest is the discussion on why to spend millions of dollars to provide free access to that which is a core product of the university. As with many things (news, music, information), the answer to this will be found in some sort of balance. I suspect that MIT will profit (and not only financially) from this effort in the end, probably many times over.
from Open Access News
