International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning Volume 17, Number 3 April – 2016 Identifying Tensions in the Use of Open Licenses in OER Repositories Tel Amiel 1 and Tiago Chagas Soares 2 1 NIED/UNESCO Chair in Open Education (UNICAMP), Brazil, 2 Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil Abstract We present an analysis of 50 repositories for educational content conducted through an "audit system" that helped us classify these repositories, their software systems, promoters, and how they communicated their licensing practices. We randomly accessed five resources from each repository to investigate the alignment of licensing information between the resources themselves, metadata pages and overall site policies. We identified a high level of incongruity that could lead to a limited impact in OER use and reuse. We discuss the lack of guidance in implementation of such repositories, particularly to those who do not have wide institutional support to implement such systems. We finalize with a critical discussion on the emphasis given to licensing in the OER movement, and how it may be an evidence of a clash between the social and legal commons. Keywords: repositories, open licenses, audit, commons Introduction Over the past decade, the movement for Open Educational Resources (OER) has managed to gain substantial popularity. The call for the 2012 “Open Education Conference” proposed that after a decade of work, it was time for a roadmap where “open education moves beyond content” i . The production of OER was, the call offers, surpassed by issues of uptake, collaboration, financial sustainability and other very relevant concerns. For more peripheral actors in the production of content, particularly those not producing content in the English language, the issues of production and visibility are, unfortunately, not a foregone concern. As activists for openness, we must be vigilant to avoid constantly replicating inequalities in terms of those who produce, develop skills and revenue, and actively participate in the