Since the early 2000s, there has been an explosion in the usage of the term open, arguably stemming from the advent of networked technologies — including the Internet and mobile technologies. ‘Openness’ seems to be everywhere, and takes many forms: from open knowledge, open education, open data and open science, to open Internet, open medical records systems and open innovation. These applications of openness are having a profound, and sometimes transformative, effect on social, political and economic life.This explosion of the use of the term has led to multiple interpretations, ambiguities, and even misunderstandings, not to mention countless debates and disagreements over precise definitions. The paper “Fifty shades of open” by Pomerantz and Peek (2016) highlighted the increasing ambiguity and even confusion surrounding this term. This article builds on Pomerantz and Peek’s attempt to disambiguate the term by offering an alternative understanding to openness — that of social praxis. More specifically, our framing can be broken down into three social processes: open production, open distribution, and open consumption. Each process shares two traits that make them open: you don’t have to pay (free price), and anyone can participate (non-discrimination) in these processes.We argue that conceptualizing openness as social praxis offers several benefits. First, it provides a way out of a variety of problems that result from ambiguities and misunderstandings that emerge from the current multitude of uses of openness. Second, it provides a contextually sensitive understanding of openness that allows space for the many different ways openness is experienced — often very different from the way that more formal definitions conceptualize it. Third, it points us towards an approach to developing practice-specific theory that we believe helps us build generalizable knowledge on what works (or not), for whom, and in what contexts.

not. Finally, the chapter connects openness and governance of the knowledge commons, which are important to the open development puzzle overall and to the analysis in this book. Openness, Inclusion, and DevelopmentOpenness, inclusion, and development are tricky concepts to unpack and to understand. The term "openness" has multiple meanings and interpretations, associated as it is with a verb (to open), a noun (openness), and an adjective (an open door). And, of late, a wide range of online content and social practices have coopted the term to give ideas, platforms, and applications a veneer of availability or transparency. Indeed, "open" is increasingly associated with nearly anything available on the Internet.Inclusion and development are similarly contested concepts. In the contexts in which IDRC works, "to include" and "to develop" (or "Who is included?" and "What is development?") are normative statements (and questions) that are built on assumptions about optimizing the good for the greatest number, and on goals of supporting human beings in their quest to achieve their highest aspirations. Yet unpacking inclusion and development into calculable, knowable, empirical notions is not an easy task. As goals-or rather, pillars-both seem to be a function of unique experience and positionality. For example, indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP) show something about a context in which people are living, but they do not speak to genuine happiness or well-being (which, at least for some, development and inclusion are meant to support). You can imagine, then, that combining ill-defined concepts to describe open development might cause confusion, and, in our experience, it has. Indeed, some argue that a singular definition is undesirable and ultimately hypocritical, as it closes off other alternatives (Davies et al. 2013). Fortunately, complete agreement on a singular definition is not essential in order for learning to occur. But to help bridge at least some of these communication gaps, we have focused on a definition of "open" as it exists in practice (which is spelled out in detail in chapter 2) so there can be clarity about the actual practices under discussion. We might not all agree with the use (or not) of the word "open," but we can point to an activity happening in the world as signifying an open practice. We have found this to be a fruitful approach.In contrast to our attempts to achieve some clarity with the concepts of open and openness, we have allowed for flexibility around the meaning of and perspectives on development and inclusion across the contributions in this volume. As Global North

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The driving aim of this volume is to understand and improve inclusion in open development practice. This concluding chapter is an attempt to draw out the key discussions, definitions, and lessons, in order to build an understanding of how inclusion matters for open practices. The first section explores the normative assumptions undergirding open practices, and the different ways that the authors of this volume frame inclusion in relation to open practices. The second section explores what matters for inclusion and open practices, providing nuance to the assumptions of open development. Finally, we offer some key takeaways and potential work going forward. Assumptions and Ways of Seeing Inclusion To draw out lessons on inclusion and open practices, it is important to understand the implicit normative assumptions behind open development practices. These assumptions are: first, knowledge is central to open development. The acquisition of knowledge is empowering, and its equitable distribution is, in turn, a public good. Second, the practices associated with openness-producing/creating, distributing/sharing, and using/reusing knowledge resources-contribute to the global knowledge commons by supporting the creation, sharing, management, and meaningful use of knowledge resources. Third, by offering cost-effective means for people and institutions to do so, open practices in education, science, governance, data, and innovation can facilitate inclusion. Fourth, over time, the distribution of knowledge, the broadening of information, and the flattening of hierarchies preventing access and use may just be able to help tackle the issue of inequality. These four assumptions show how inclusion undergirds open development; in fact, open development is a process of inclusion. These