My thoughts on the importance of open-use resources in education are pretty well-known. To my way of thinking, given the breathtaking markup that most paid educational resources are offered under, combined with the budgetary crises that face public education, schools have an ethical obligation to pursue free alternatives for paid products wherever possible. I'd extend this thinking to all facets of the educational experience, but this post is going to focus specifically on free-use textbooks.  Long a goal of open education proponents, over the past few years, free-use texts have finally reached the point where they are now viable alternatives to paid texts in major fields of study.  These resources are now so well-developed that I will never again advocate adoption of a paid text over a free one for any subject I teach (Biology and Chemistry).  Offered below are two of the major free-use textbook consortiums, and a description of just what they are offering the educational community.