According to Tony Bates and others, Open Education is
education for all: free or very low cost school, college or university education available to everyone within a particular jurisdiction, usually funded primarily through the state;
open access to programs that lead to full, recognised qualifications. These are offered by national open universities or more recently by the OERu;
open access to courses or programs that are not for formal credit, although it may be possible to acquire badges or certificates for successful completion. MOOCs are a good example;
open educational resources that instructors or learners can use [and adapt] for free;
open textbooks, online textbooks that are free for students to use;
open research, whereby research papers are made available online for free downloading;
open data, that is, data open to anyone to use, reuse, and redistribute, subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share.
open access to scholarly work available for free online, typically through open access journals