Since you mentioned Germany, I feel free to add a few thoughts to your post. Students fees have been debated very hotly for a long time in Germany. I was fortunate to have my studies for free but now as I am working at the "other side" of the University, I experience the pressure with increasing student population while the amount of staff remains the same. My university is especially keen on reaching more and more students because it is good for the reputation. We are currently running one (x)MOOC and preparing a(c)MOOC and I know how much work and resources are needed to have a good product, i.e. not just a standard xMOOC. If the educational experience for the students are valuable I think it is justifiable to charge for this experience. By the way: We currently have a call for proposals for a "MOOC production fellowship" sponsored by the business community's innovation agency for the German science system and a for-profit start-up (the German version of Coursera). Up to know, over 250 universities have applied to get one of ten fellowships with a budget of €25,000. The question is: What happens to those MOOC concepts that will not be funded? I think this will have an impact on the overall MOOC discussion in Germany.

Excellent post Martin. It reminds me of the book "Winning the Story Wars" (http://winningthestorywars.com/about-the-book.html) which I am currently reading. It seems like a global phenomenon as we in Germany experience the same battle as you described. Some weeks ago, a prestigious magazine published a leading article which tried to argue that Khan is the founding father of the MOOC. Usually they can do better journalism.

This is just a wonderful example of the "Wars on story", see: http://winningthestorywars.com We have all the necessary ingredients: Good (OER, Open Access, "true" MOOC), villain (publishing industry, Coursera, Udacity), morals: education is a fundamental right and must thus be free for everybody, and the story.

As far as the recent development is concerned and Martin has referred to that, I am afraid that we will have the penguin "Open" for the original MOOC concept and a penguin massive or "revolutionary" for the market MOOCs.

Thanks Martin for this interesting post. You might take a look at my article "How revolutionary are MOOCs and their spin-offs? " http://markusmind.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/how-revolutionary-are-moocs-and-their-spin-offs-some-tentative-predictions-change11-opco/ Kind regards, Markus