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Is there a reason why professors haven't led the way in switching to textbooks published as free cultural works?

Because only profs who already have tenure can afford the luxury of non-traditional publishing mechanisms.

The others have to go with the traditional publishers because that way they get at least a little bit of "research output" credit. Not much, but at least the dean of the faculty won't be immediately firing them for wasting valuable research time.

This isn't likely to change much within the next decade or two, because the people who get to decide which kinds of publication "count" as research output and which ones don't are never academics themselves. Textbooks as free cultural works can't become the norm unless both academics, and the bureaucrats who conduct research output evaluations, are persuaded simultaneously.

Typically, the publisher will stop selling the old edition

In other words, the old "Disney vault" trick. Is there a reason why professors haven't led the way in switching to textbooks published as free cultural works?

We in the non-profit licensing sector of the FLOSS world have a duty to the community of FLOSS users and programmers to defend their software freedom. I try to make every decision, on licensing policy (or, indeed, any issue) with that goal in mind.

Of course CC doesn't do software licenses and some of its licenses are only semi-free by the standards of free as in (software) freedom as applied to culture, but the overall lesson of the responsibility of license stewards applies.

It's not my fault you didn't catch the Invader Zim reference.

Invader Zim is non-free. It's easier to catch pop culture references if they are pre-1923 or otherwise free.

That's beside the point unless the machines in the Pixar render farm use VIA chipsets. True, Pixar uses Linux in the render farm, but the DVD-ROM special features on Disney DVD retail titles aren't designed for Linux. Nor is the motion picture itself free; in fact, it is under digital restrictions management and patented codecs. So let me rephrase:

A world of high-performance video is a world of games and high-definition feature films. In such a world, some would say FOSS on home hardware is of relatively minor importance. Since when [...] has a Free film got a nationwide theatrical release?

Obviously, they use a different definition of "freedom" from you. (Note to mod:I'm not endorsing either in this comment, at worst I'm playing devil's advocate)

The original phrase was "Copyleft: All rights reversed". The "reversed" means that the rights of the end user are protected more so than the rights of the developer (the more natural beneficiary of copyright) - to wit, the end user is preserved the rights to run the program for any reason, share the program, examine and learn from the source code, and build and distribute derivatives.

Berkeley et. al. focus on protecting the rights of the developer more than the end user - to wit, the developer can create proprietary products from such code and deny the above freedoms to their end users.

Since libertarian principles focus on individual liberty over corporate or state interests, I firmly believe that copyleft is clearly the more libertarian license, and choose it over the alternatives for my own modest endeavors. Its popularity indicates that I am not alone.

Oddly enough, I've been called "right-wing" on several occasions, but never "left-wing" (though it truth I'm neither). Go figure.

Your opinion may (and almost certainly will ;-) differ.

[When are homebrew developers] going to make something other then emulators and ports of Doom/Quake/Etc?

Probably once you help with creating models, textures, etc. under a free license suitable for use in free video games. The free non-software works movement isn't as mature as the free software movement yet.

You can find free "open source" equivalents of both Netflix (most public libraries have a selection of videos) and cable TV (over the air).

Most videos at most public libraries are still not free. Most programs aired on cable TV are likewise non-free. What definition of "open source" are you using?

the best that can be said for OO is that it's "almost as good" as Office (like over the air TV is "almost as good" as cable).

Though LGPL doesn't do anything directly for a home user, there is still an advantage of LGPL over a proprietary freeware license for users who develop plug-ins. Or are the major networks broadcasting GFDL or CC-BY works now?

"does the copyright still belong to the original author"

It certainly does, just like any (significant, per copyright law) changes you get added to the Linux kernel.

"and can they revoke the right to have their article printed?"

Nope, GFDL release is irrevocable just like GPL release, just like if you wanted all your changes to Linux pulled no-one would be obliged to. Wikipedia is free content, as analogous to free software.

(If someone's making a real fuss about it and it won't be a major PITA, we may remove a contributor's changes. But that's only so as not to be dicks about it, rather than from any obligation to do so.)

"Well, if you get income from your land, then you have to pay tax on it, just like you have to pay tax on any other income." Yet land is still subject to an additional tax. What's the difference?

• Property tax tends to keep real estate from going unused too long because the owner must pay it whether he is using the property or not. Copyright, on the other hand, encourages hoarding of works such as Disney's Song of the South.
• Property tax tends to keep the records of ownership of each plot of land up to date. Copyright does not, resulting in the problem of orphan works.
• Property tax funds the enforcement of exclusive rights associated with property. The copyright registration fee does not, resulting in the entertainment industry trade groups' lobbying of the FBI to cut the budget for investigation of violent and drug crime in order to free up funds for copyright investigation.

So what downside do you see to amending various national laws to tax the copyright in each work not published under a free license, even if it is only a nominal amount?

They still haven't decided on the license of their original articles:"All new articles will be available under an open content license yet to be determined.".

If they will go the oh-so-common route of choosing a license with "non-commercial" clause (hey, we're soo anti-commercial and soo "free"), they really won't be a competitor to Wikipedia since the reusage possibilities of Citizendium's material drops dramatically.

I would guess they will choose some free license, and choosing any other than GFDL (without invariant sections / covers) is going to be a big pain for them since they would need to handle the fact of license changing from article to article. But since they _still_ haven't chosen anything, I'd take that as a sign they really don't a) understand, b) care or c) want their material to be freely usable.

Thanks to the wonderful English language (lacking "libre"), we already have eg. Scholarpedia, "the free peer reviewed encyclopedia", "like Wikipedia" (just don't put any material on anything you're selling, oh and btw don't take more than 100 copies). I would hope for real competition from Citizendium, rather than fooling people with "free" sites and luring eg. professionals to write to them like Scholarpedia does.

Music under the Free Art License, the GNU General Public License,[1] or the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License is copyrighted, but it's still Free. On the other hand, have the major labels ever published Free musical recordings in more than token amounts?

[1] I'd interpret the copyleft requirement such that mid/s3m/xm is "source code" and wav/mp3/ogg is "object code" for a musical recording.

Except as otherwise agreed in writing by the Licensor or as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law, if You Reproduce, Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work either by itself or as part of any Adaptations or Collections, You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation.

I've been writing something along that line of thought: a thought experiment about the broken window fallacy and free culture. For now it can be found here though it may change or be relocated, I haven't really figured out where is a sensible place to put it yet.