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Do Open-Source Books Work?
bcrowell writes: "Whose version of the digital book is destined for world conquest?
Pure and virtuous open-source books don't seem to have spread
beyond the computer-science ghetto, while the dark side of the
force is represented by the advent of
mandatory antibooks in dental school.
This
article aims to move beyond the moralizing and tackle
the real issues that are playing out in the free-book arena." Interesting to see this article come from someone who has himself written such a book.
All of the current "digital books" that I've seen are a kind of tablet and you click buttons to make the pages scroll by. A big version of a palm pilot, or one of those Transmeta "web appliances". They won't replace books, because books have a quality that pure digital devices don't.
A book has texture, substance, density, weight, alot of things that make it much more physical, and therefore real, than these digital books do. If you're asking me, this is a fad. These digital books will wind up looking more like the Star Trek pads that you saw being waved about. Small palm-pilot sized devices which can interface with nearby systems (bluetooth) and upload/download information. They will have texts in them, of course, but people won't use them to read volumes - it strains the eye.
So I think the better question would be "What will these books evolve into?"
--
It won't solve the "can't merge Word docs with Pagemaker docs" sort of problems (unless the authors agree up front to always write in RTF.)
John
John
The LDP is using CVS to store its documents (DocBook SGML) and I've collaborated with other LDP authors on the LDP Authoring Guide (formerly the HOWTO-HOWTO) via CVS.
In terms of editors, there are quite a few:
PSGML for Emacs (highlighting and validation)
gvim does DocBook highlighting
LyX has some rudimentary DocBook export support
nedit supports hightlighting and validation
tksgml is more tag-oriented, but has a nice layout
WordPerfect for Windows also has an SGML mode (the Linux version apparently does not)
I give a quick mention (along with URLs) of most of the above in the LAG.
-Mark
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Bruce Eckel's Thinking In Java is free as in speech and as in beer for the online version. The entire book is free to download and the author has consented to allowing people to print copies of the book from the online version (which is traditionally against copyright law).
He accepts corrections and updates from most people as well as sample code. In this sense it is free as in speech. Read what people have had to say about the book.
What's really cool is that the book has turned out to be so good that many people I know still ; buy the dead tree version. Best of all it doesn't use any proprietary formats but instead good old HTML.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
Your argument has some merit. Indeed, not everyone learns linearly. Also, the fixed, static nature of books is a detriment in a rapidly-changing information scene (look at my collection of OReilly books - I'm 2 versions out of date already.... Sigh.)
However, I'm going to take issue with you on several statements, and make some of my own:
The most immediate advantage of print is it's readability. There has been some interesting developments in digital ink (technologies where you have a white "paper" with crystals embede in it which change orientation (and look black rather than white) on application of a small charge), but even then, readability for electronic books sucks hard. You certainly can't have people reading off of LCD/CRTs for any period of time.
Durability and portability. Books never run out of power. The ability to use them as legs for your sofa is a testament to how sturdy they are. Fundamentally, until we can build a portable reading device that allows you to bash it around like a 4th-grade history book, well, electronic books are not going to be anything popular. Paper doesn't crash when you run it under water (hey, just dry it out!), erase itself when left on top of the TV or microwave, or delete itself when you accidentally hit the wrong key combo.
With respect to textbooks and changing information: in the vast majority of cases, textbooks should never be used in a rapidly fluctuating environment. Textbooks are for imparting a base knowledge level of a subject. Essentially, they are reference material. The information in them generally is not Incorrect (yes, you HS biology books from the 50s need to be tossed out, but the ones in the 80s? I think not.), rather it becomes out-of-date. Supplements and addendums are excellent ways to keep "static" textbooks relevant for years. W/R/T non-textbooks, the practice of publishing errata and updates to the original book via the Web is an excellent way to combine the advantages of print with the immediacy of the electronic (especially when you can print out the electronic updates and stick them in the back of the book!).
Alot of the debate around textbooks is really a funding issue, not a medium issue. Honestly, I'd rather see schools invest in having no textbooks older than 10 years than getting a computer for each child. Which do you thing is really better?
Also, despite about 20 years of "reformers" claiming that the linear teaching methods are stiffling our children and limiting their ability, "flexible/associated learning" is a complete, unmittigated disaster, especially in the lower grades. Linear textbook or teacher-driven learning is probably the BEST method for imparting a base understanding and fundamental knowledge of anything. A structured program where knowledge is presented in a pre-determined manner is really the only way to effectively teach a complete newbie a subject rapidly. A certain subset of the population would do better quickly switching to a more exploratory method of learning, but textbooks are aimed at the vast majority of people, most of which need structure to learn. Now, later in life (college, and probably HS), we should look to alternate methods rather than purely strict structure, but remember, you have to learn to crawl before you can run the 100m dash.
Fundamentally, the printed textbook has so many advantages over the distributed eBook-thingy that I can't see the eBook being anything more than a gizmo for decades.
Oh, and by the way, we already have "open" educational information. It's called the Internet. Look how reliable and trustworthy information that comes from it is. The editorial process provides a level of certainty that is not to be found in rapidly-changing e-texts. yes, print does occasionally have mistakes, and there is a detectible bias according to the period the book was written in. However, the constant "revision" process of e-texts means that large amounts of the text will not be fact-checked (or even consistent), as future updates will undoubtably be counted on to fix mistakes. That's OK, until they find mistakes in chunks I've already read and internalized, which means that I've got to go back and re-read it. Basically, it's rather have the information correct the first time around, rather than constantly worry that what I've read is right or maybe a mistake.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I do not forsee the death of paper books any time soon. When given a set of cdrom documentation, what do most of us do? Print it out of course. While a searchable index which is hyperlinked to the appropriate page is nice for brief reference reading. Documentation ultimately ends up in paper form because staring at a screen is too stressful for the eyes.
If e-books or whatever you want to call them become mainstream, there will be people like myself printing out the data they contain. It has proven invaluable to have hard copies of data that is truly valuable to me in the evnt of serious wrath-of-god type situations. (One can still manage to decode a book that has been through a flood, where most data media will be gone for good)
I think that we should temper our fear with reason on this front. Yes, we need to be viligant to ensure that the proper formats for these new e-books get put into place and that we don't end up with corporatized versions of books. But we should also realize that no matter what new technology comes along, it will not nor can it ever completely replace the paper book. We will need to worry when they start trying outlawing printers and printing presses to push electronic books on us though.
Anyone with serious documentation at their house knows it is hard copy (printed text on paper) that is the easiest to read.
I also have faith that anything they throw at us in an attempt to stop us from printing it out and accessing the data contained on the e-book will be circumvented. They cannot imprison information, it won't happen because people like us won't let it happen. That is the most important issue, we need to make sure that we are vocal enough now to ensure that we don't need to circumvent anything. At the same time we can't run off into hysterics though. Which is why I say we need to be careful about how we present what we know is the proper view about such new forms of books, they should be free and have the same rights of access and copying as any other books. Be that permission from the author/publisher or open source books ala project guttenberg.
RMS may be loony sometimes, but he was right in prophesizing that there would come a day when these freedoms we take for granted with books would be threatened.
These books are not the "book" equivalent of "open source software". They are mearly texts whose copyright have expired. "Open Source" works are by definition still covered by copyright.
Gutenberg is quite cool, but it only contains OLD books. For "new" work authors need to use something like the GNU's free content license or the Open Content license.
"In this climate of vanishingly thin margins, the most successful textbook is little more than a loss leader, and one with more modest sales is a disaster. Every book has to be a home run. K-12 biology books often don't mention evolution for fear of losing sales in socially conservative school districts. History books avoid controversy by propagating the myth that John Brown was insane, or by failing to mention that the Vietnam war began as a war of independence in a French colony."
So as to avoid losing sales from those who would be offended, truth is sacrificed. This is a dangerous slope upon which to stand. Since there are a myriad of opinions and sacred cows in the world, to be so focused on the money at the expense of teaching reality is to eventually reach the point where you teach nothing controversial. Only feel-good, rah-rah, aren't we wonderful material will get printed.
It's somewhat different in the general book market where a variety of opinions is still considered a good thing. But in the textbook market, I think the open source concept is needed, if only to provide an alternative to the money-above-all crowd.
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Private Essayist
I'm afraid this wanders a bit, but hopefully it sparks some real thinking (the source article wanders too so I'm just being consistent :).
Crowell's article makes a fundamental assumption: that (educational) books are the best way to learn real information. I agree that books are the best way to hunker down for a nice enjoyable read, but that's not information in the educational sense, that's entertainment (however sublime the author's writing - yes it can be educational too, but let's not get into that).
For those who did not read the article: he basically goes into the fact that because the price of entry into printing is so high, that open source books, or even collaborative books for that matter which are intended to be as useful as possible (rather than as profitable as possible) don't stand much of a chance in today's markets. He also despairs over the lack of other real options (aside from Latex, which he dubs as too complicated for the average user).
What is it about printed books that makes it a superior format for textbooks and other kinds of changing information? Is it the fact that every change requires a new generation of trees to be sacrificed to propagate the update? No. It's the fact that printing is so systemized that it's become relatively cheap (compared to word of mouth and compared to computers). In fact, books are very inconvenient to use for dissemination of changing (educational or otherwise) information. Textbooks must change to keep up with changing information and to keep up with the changing demands of society. (Crowell also mentions how horrible textbooks are today and seems to imply that open source books would remedy that somewhat, but that's more of an assumption on his part which is irrelevant to the feasibility and methodology of open source texts).
As a side note: Information taught in schools is crucial to modern civilization, so this is not a trivial issue. If the medium becomes restrictive or inaccessible, then civilization's very development will be hampered. Yes, I do think that key-locked DVD textbooks are inherently evil. They should be outright illegal or legally unsupportable for intellectual property suits.
Another side note: Is information best taught in the linear format used in textbooks? Think about how you think for a moment. How does your sense of curiosity work? Maybe it's only geeks that do this (thank you, but no I personally am not a nerd), but it seems to me that our thinking about a subject will network, regardless of a subject's real complexity. Again, this branches into yet another discussion about the best way to learn, yadda, yadda, yadda; but I think the point is clear: the few of us who do think like a textbook (linearly only) are clearly at a disadvantage. (Yes, I have met in-DUH-viduals like this. It's pretty sad.)
So what now? Well, we'll probably be stuck with paper until something as accessible and just as cheap comes along. So, until those nifty plastic screens with low-energy processing units (preferably solar powered), high resolution and easily readable characters, and ubiquitous and cheap networking (for new and *open* content) become available, we're pretty much stuck. But I will go out on a limb here: those sorts of devices WILL replace paper within 50 years, and much more quickly I hope. It will become necessary primarily for economic reasons: as the price of dead-tree resources skyrockets, impetus will exist to move to this new format.
The masses will be ultimately intolerant of locked down or closed educational information. The market will adapt to allow the masses to have open content. Any solution that doesn't do this will lead to despotism.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!