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There's a few projects like that. As far as I know, they aren't really in widespread use.

A professor of mine once said that if you really want to know the material you should try writing a textbook on it. He was in the middle of writing various textbooks on Group Theory and Abstract Algebra. I think that's good advice for any expert in any field.

Here are some links I found after a quick google search:

California Open Source Textbook Project

Textbook Revolution

Open Textbook Repository

An open source Linear Algebra Textbook

A list of open source Math textbooks

Hope this helps!

Quick answer:

Introduction to Information & Communication Technology - Using Free Software and Open Technologies
Edited By: Will Brady
http://openbookproject.net/courses/intro2ict/index.xhtml

The Non-nerds Guide to Computers
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non-nerds_Guide_to_Computers

But seriously spend half an hour going through results of Google search on these terms: open textbooks computing

You will have to go through the texts yourself but there are many out there at many different levels.

Here are the main resources.

Wikibooks
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Subject:Computing
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non-nerds_Guide_to_Computers
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Computers_for_Beginners

Flat World Knowledge
http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/

MIT Open Courseware
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/index.htm

Make Textbooks Affordable open textbooks
http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org/statement.asp?id2=37833

Student PIRGs
http://www.studentpirgs.org/open-textbooks-catalog#computersci

List at Walla Walla Community College
http://www.wwcc.edu/CMS/index.php?id=2835

The Assayer free books list
http://theassayer.org/
http://www.theassayer.org/cgi-bin/asbrowsesubject.cgi?class=Q#freeclassQAc

California Learning Resource Network (only math and science)
http://clrn.org/FDTI/index.cfm

OER Consortium
http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/#Computer

Open Book Project
http://openbookproject.net/
http://www.openbookproject.net/courses/

Introduction to Information & Communication Technology - Using Free Software and Open Technologies
Edited By: Will Brady
http://openbookproject.net/courses/intro2ict/index.xhtml

O'Reilly Open Books
http://oreilly.com/openbook/

Textbook Revolution
http://www.textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Book:Lists/Subjects/Computer_Science

http://www.opentextbook.org/
http://freelearning.bccampus.ca/openTextbook.php?page_id=221&bookmark=Computing

BS!

Just because as an academic, I could copy a commercial work and make a few changes to it with out fear of the copyright police coming after me, doesn't mean that a commercial entity could now take that work and use it as if there wasn't any copyright of the original. It just means my contribution is free. This is like including snippets of BSD code in GPL code, and wouldn't harm any projects created by outside communities.

As far as fights breaking out over where work was produced, this would be no different than current patent rights issues in academia. If you aren't being productive, or there is a clear conflict of interest your institution is likely to fire you.

Finally, if copyright is abolished in academia, this wouldn't stop you from selling a commercial textbook with protection against other commercial, it just means that students in academia won't have to pay to get a copy of it. Most likely this means books written specifically for students would have to be funded though some other means, such as a grant or charter. I can't see how this would be a bad thing as some of the experiences I've had with the current system tells me it's severly broken. For instance the professor who taught chemistry at WPI mandated his book be used for the class. No one else used the book because it was so poorly written, making the on-line used market virtually non-existent and thereby forcing all sales to go though the school bookstore for twice the cost of any other chemistry text. Not to mention the correction manual that came with the book was almost half as large as the book it self, making fluid reading nearly impossible. Furthermore, NIH already hosts many text books they've bought the rights too or that have been donated. Similarly, there's a whole slew of textbooks already being published on the internet for free and being modified like an open source software projects.

There are some excellent textbooks available online, with renowned authors standing behind them. Please start discovering the wondeful world of Textbook Revolution!

You're right. In fact, there are a number of textbooks released under the GNU Free Documentation License, where the LaTeX source code is freely available. For example, these books. In my opinion, those would qualify as "open source" textbooks. In fact, by using the GFDL I'd say they're more than just "open source", they are "free" (as in speech, though also as in beer).

Indeed. They should take advantage of the open-source textbooks that already exist... either by simply selecting one for their purposes, or putting together the best pieces from various sources into a coherent textbook that serves their purposes. Here are the open-source textbook (or related information) sites I'm aware of:

Pointers to Textbooks and Content:
http://textbookrevolution.org/
http://www.opentextbook.org/
http://www.theassayer.org/
http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/
http://globaltext.terry.uga.edu/
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Books

Some available lecture notes:
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html#languages
http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/

• The Assayer
• Open Text Book
• Ink Textbooks
• Free Curricula Center
• Free Textbook Project
• Flat World Knowledge
• Textbook Revolution
• Wikibooks

Textbook Revolution is a major source of free textbooks in many subjects.

Wikipedia-based Free AI Textbook is one example of the future of free textbooks -- in this case, for the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence.

The Free AI Textbook is really in three parts: the 2002 print-on-demand AI4U textbook of artificial intelligence; AI mind-module update pages; and AI background links into topical AI areas of Wikipedia, where a vast army of AI experts is constantly updating the free AI textbook.

Mind for MSIE is the free, tutorial AI source code (in JavaScript; also in Forth) described in the free AI textbook.

Textbook Revolution is a major source of free textbooks in many subjects.

Wikipedia-based Free AI Textbook is one example of the future of free textbooks -- in this case, for the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence.

The Free AI Textbook is really in three parts: the 2002 print-on-demand AI4U textbook of artificial intelligence; AI mind-module update pages; and AI background links into topical AI areas of Wikipedia, where a vast army of AI experts is constantly updating the free AI textbook.

Mind for MSIE is the free, tutorial AI source code (in JavaScript; also in Forth) described in the free AI textbook.

It is estimated that less than a percent of microorganisms have been identified. You can go to your back yard and discover something new to science. Go ahead and do that right now - i'll wait. The article suggests that this new finding is the not end of the issue. So clearly, instead of changing the textbooks and making students buy the new one, the textbooks should be on line, where they can be updated and disseminated quickly. For example:

http://www.textbookrevolution.org/

So, Archaea, Prokaryotes, Eukaryotes and Viruses. Eukaryotes come in four groups: Plants, Opisthokonts (that's us and other fungi, etc.), Excavates, and SAR.

The article does not eliminate Prokaryotes, or combine Archaea with something else, or mention Viruses.

So, what's the current consensus on Prions?

>There's absolutely no reason in the world why we shouldn't have a complete set of open content textbooks covering all of a basic liberal education
Agreed, tho the $100M you mention seems more than should be needed; Wikipedia just raised nearly $1M all from small donations. I can't believe that textbooks for the basic 4 subjects, math, reading, science, history, for 1-8th grade, couldn't be written by a small group of writers in a year for $1M. I bet if you offered a bounty, like 'RentACoder' on two smaller projects, one that created the 'table of contents' for the books, then another to actually write all the chapters, you'd end up with free-to-use e-books that could be used by any district that wished.

Maybe some of these 'free textbook' sites are a good place to start:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.businessbookmall.com/Free%20Business%20 Books.htm
http://digg.com/tech_news/Hundreds_of_Free_Textboo ks_on_one_website
http://www.textbookrevolution.org/

The reason nobody has heard of it is probably the evil college bookstore cartel.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to blame college bookstores for this. They're mostly nonprofit. It's the publishers who are really being evil.

They will break your hands with hammers if they find out you have been using free textbooks instead of the ones they sell.
I'm currently typing this with two unbroken hands, after 9 years of using free textbooks in my physics classes.

There are already hundreds of free college textbooks on the web:

• theassayer.org (a catalog of free books in general, not just textbooks; accepts user-submitted reviews)
• textbookrevolution.org (a site specifically devoted to free textbooks)
• libertytextbooks.org (a selection of high-quality free textbooks)

Wikibooks was originally envisioned as a project that would have textbooks as its main raison d'etre, but IMO it's failed at that goal. Although there are quite a few textbooks at the wikibooks site, almost none of them are of high enough quality to be widely adopted for classroom use. I don't think that's particularly surprising, because the wiki method is simply unsuited to the task of writing textbooks. The killer app for wikibooks right now seems to be books about video games.

I'm Jason Turgeon, publisher of http://www.textbookrevolution.org/. I'm replying on this thread on behalf of the Freeload Press management team. Freeload is in the process of acquiring textbookrevolution. We'd briefly like to address the concerns of the Slashdot community.

Many commenters are concerned about the possibility that ads could influence the content of the textbooks. These are legitimate concerns common to all publishers. We simply will not accept any interference with the integrity of the content. Any publisher's path to success starts with the quality of the content. In this regard, we will be similar to newspapers and magazines, with a firewall built between editorial and the advertising operations. This is the same process used by other ad-supported media, including the New York Times and Slashdot.

Other commenters expressed concerns that PDF files are difficult to read, and that the flow of the text will be interrupted by ads. Freeload is placing ads only at natural breaks in the text, such as before and after chapter headings. Freeload acknowledges that PDF is not always easy to read on screen, but many students seem happy to make this tradeoff given the considerable savings. Unlike the heavily DRM'd ebook offerings from traditional publishers, students are free to print as much or as often as they would like. Low-cost, ad-free paperbound versions of the books are available for students who prefer not to read on screen. These paperbound versions are significantly less expensive than comparable offerings from traditional publishers. Freeload Press will soon adopt a version of the open source dotReader program (http://www.dotreader.com/site/) as an alternative to PDF (users will still be able to choose PDF versions if they don't want to install new software). DotReader has several advantages over PDF that will make it more valuable to students than either PDF or print books. Finally, I am personally taking charge of the initiative to make Freeload's PDF's available in two versions, optimized for either printing or on-screen viewing. This should make it easier for students who want to read books on screen to do so with a minimum of scrolling and eyestrain. These changes will take some time, but we hope to have them ready for the next academic year.

Several people noted that one reason traditional textbooks are so expensive is the frequent update cycle designed to kill the used book market. Since Freeload's product does not have to worry about the used book market, there will be fewer new editions. Updates will be integrated into current editions as they are needed to keep the books current, with version tracking just like software. Professors will be free to assign whichever version they want. Completely new editions will not be necessary every 2-3 years in most subjects, making it easier for professors to stick with a book they are comfortable with and reducing confusion for students. Of course, in fast-changing subjects, we will issue new editions as often as they are necessary.

If you have a specific concern or comment about the books, ads, or software platform, please get in touch with me: jason AT textbookrevolution DOT org. Also, please note that we know both websites need an upgrade. We're working on it, and we think the new versions will make even the most tech-obsessed user happy.

Here is a recent USA Today article that talks about something similar to what you're referring to. Free textbooks aren't hypothetical, they already exist. A sugar-daddy philanthropist isn't required; professors are already doing it for the same reason they've always written textbooks. (Hint: they've never expected to make any significant amount of money on the typical textbook.) Some good starting points:

• theassayer.org
• textbookrevolution.org

-MIT's Open Courseware at: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

-Textbook revolution at http://textbookrevolution.org/

-Physiscs texts at: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html#langua ges

-The assayer at http://www.theassayer.org/

-Open content at http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/Education/Technolo gy/OpenContent/opencontent.htm

I also know a number of econometric and statistics texts that are also available as free Ebooks, but they are of interest only to specialists.