Forty years ago, after having the revelation of a revolution in higher education during an internship at the infant UK Open University, Sir John Daniel made opening up education the theme of his career. He has nurtured open and distance learning in universities as practitioner and scholar and coordinated the global Education for All campaign. The final months of his work at the Commonwealth of Learning aim to persuade the world’s governments to support the concept of open educational resources. The paper will reflect candidly on these experiences in order to ask whether opening up access to the institutions and processes of learning really does foster freedom and democracy.