Richards Treves has kicked off an interesting discussion on Sharing Content across Institutions at Moodle.org.  His post contained a gem of a link on Metacrap that will be a reusable learning object for me . 

I think that much of the project work on reusable learning objects takes an institutional focus, with all the baggage that Richard described.  Also 'objects' lack context and when we share them in OS (and other communities) we can tap into that context via dialogue.
If you want to get theoretical about it, it's the old tension (see Wenger) between reification and participation.  We'd love to just take someone's lesson plan (or 'learning design') as is but really it means a lot more when we talk to them about it.
Another common feature of reusable learning objects projects is that they have 'communities of practice' because they are a 'good thing'  but they don't really work because they are more about serving the 'repository' than the 'community' members.  Richard's point about using the OS ethos to build content sharing communities is important, I think.  There are social and technical issues that can be illuminated by the OS perspective. The organic growth of repository like flickr.com seems somehow more like the growth of a piece of OSS than a project-based structured repository.

Stephen Downes wrote in Getting Down to It about a Code of Ethics posted by Dave Warlick

"Dave Warlick posts a "Student and Teacher Information Code of Ethics." I personally think that a code of ethics is not useful, because if one believes in the ethics, the coded is not needed, and if one doesn't, the code will not be followed. Moreover, there is no need, again in my view, for an "Information" code of ethics - the basic principles apply in all areas of life: be honest, and take care not to harm others."

I am sympathetic to some of what Stephen says (I found the code a little stodgy) but there is an interesting discussion to be had about 'what and whose code of ethics'. He seems to be saying that he has a simple code of ethics and it is universal (for him at least). I wouldn't like to label him  as such (that's his call), but when a libertarian ethic dominates online communication that does not give everyone the opportunity to avoid harm and feel able to be 'honest' i.e. say what they think. A lot of the research that was done on early CMC on USenet had a somewhat skewed demographic of mainly youngish white middle class males. This is obviously changing but a code or some recognition that ethics is important to the group. It's difficult to achieve but (as Kim and Preece have said) codes/social policies can have a place (alongside observing norms from people's behaviour) as long as they are developed by the collective.
The other thing Dave Warlick seemed to be doing was guiding students on being critical consumers of information and reliable providers of it. That has to be a good thing, though there are other ways to achieve it.

I have been following with interest Stephen Downes blog on Codes of Ethics. He has been talking about codes being fixed rules, and the tension between developing a personal code of ethics and following someone else's.  That is a very good point but not the whole story I think.  The issue I wanted to raise has not been picked up from my comments there so my response is to make my comments here in my blog.
That made me think about why I decided to continue this post on my own blog and link back to it.
Nancy White's excellent series of posts on Blog Communities helped me think this through, particularly the last one that showed aspects of blog-centric, topic-centric and Community-centric blog communities.
Perhaps a blog-centric approach fits with someone who emphasises their own individual ethics whereas in a community-centric approach the collective are willing to subscribe to a shared set of norms.  I am feeling that there is more to it than this though - even in a community-centric approach there could be power differences as stark as in a blog-centric one.
I think that to understand the nature of a given community it would be very useful to know how norms are derived and developed.