Slashdot Mirror
Tackling Open-Source Book Projects?
Wheeler asks: "I am
currently writing a book ('The Directory Services Cookbook', shameless
self-plug), which I plan to publish under some form of open license, once
it's finished. At this point I am really looking for clues on which license
would be appropriate for your classic, not-necessary-digital work of
creation. And while we're at it: Can other OS book projects share
experience on how to tackle the process of writing in general. I personally
think a little Linus T. should be in every project doing editing, checking for
style and layout, the works. Any comments?"
linuxdocs.org also, there are plenty of normal books thrown all around on the internet...all you have to do is search
I understand that you want to give something back to the community that gave you linux (as do I with verious open source projects), but it seems that an "open source" book might be too easy to steal. Imagine that you truly post the source to the book (LaTeX or something), and someone latexs it and prints off a thousand copies at Kinko's, has it bound, and sells them for $10 on eBay. You'll have to use something like GPL, but does GPL really apply to books? This is pretty new area, so be very careful (if your book is pretty good, and worth real money) -- there's always some asshole that wants to make a buck at someone else's expense.
[You could say the same thing about Linux distros though. The difference is that good distros give something back. In the book example, maybe someone writes a few chapters and sells printed copies of your book with the extra chapters, but then gives you the copyright on the extra chapters. It's really hard to say...]
My other car is first.
Many people create valuable content and then insist on hosting or publishing the content themselves.
Instead consider contributing your content to a public content repository like Wikipedia.
This allows other people to easily contribute to and update your work, even if you lose interest or something happens to you. Additionally, your work will be redundantly stored and likely accessible for the far future.
Do whay O'Reilly does with their Open Book program.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Try the new Software Assurance program it's new intuive and simple. By the way, don't even think GPL I've heard it's some kind of a virus.
(Score:5, Whoring)
What you are reading is your book.
You may share this book with anyone, provided the following:
1) You must provide a full copy of the book, including this license to each person you are sharing this book with.
2) If you make changes to this book, you may not remove this license.
That wasn't so hard, was it?
Well,
;)
:0
I don't have much experience in writing OS books, but I would say, start with your basics:
Outline what you plan to do
Get a rough idea of chapters, etc.
get a rough draft
submit it to friends for editing/proofreading, etc.
get it back, "spice" it up some, re-submit for editing.
Have them check this version out and make any additional changes, etc...and submit for our approval
btw, this is all basic stuff, but I wanted to help and this is all I had to offer.
Guess that makes me pathetic
Sent from your iPad.
Bruce Eckel publishes books (like "Thinking in Java") as both a free online book, yet sells the printed copy. What he does is publishes the book like normal, but also makes them available for free on his webpage. So if you ever need it to reference, you can jump online to read it. And to support him, most people buy a copy of his book. Its the best of both worlds.
Another nice advantage is he has books that he isn't finished with available online ("Thinking in Patterns" is one of his), where people can read it and give him feedback before he takes it to the press... Check grammar, find things that are easier to reword, play around with his example code, etc... Its almost like an open source project right there. And he makes money on his books (cause, any java coder that has read "Thinking in Java" owns a copy. Its like a Bible for Java).
This may be a technique you may consider...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I imagine that when they go into the real world and actually get PAID for what they write, they will be less apt to just give it away instead. But hey!
lol, I suppose I have to conform to the presupposed opinions of the moderators ro be branded a troll. lil kiddies cant take criticism
I suggest checking out Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing. It is available in both online and print versions (in addition to being a fantastic read).
Does the GPL or other licenses have books in mind?
I'm not sure I'd want people altering what I wrote and releasing it... that's a very different type of speech than program code is.
There's a difference between two. Open-source means anyone can take your source code (in LaTeX or something like that), make some changes and produce his own version of the book. I have some doubts about this model, though. Most ot the free books I've seen are just free. Anyone can use them but not contribute.
If you really want to produce a "collaborative" book, take a look at the Wiki model.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
My technology skills are too soft to contribute as a developer to an open-source project, but I'm an experienced editor who'd love to have the opportunity to copy edit for a project or two.
I wouldn't know where to start to find a match for my time and skills. Are there resources that list projects like the one above looking for editorial assistance? If not, should there be one?
There doesn't seem to be much precedent for writing "open source" books, per se. My suggestion is that you contact a publisher and work out a contract that allows them to exclusively produce and publish the written form of the book, but that also allows the book to be freely available online. Maybe you could also work out an agreement that the publisher would give up all rights to the book after 5 years or so. You probably won't make any money on the book (but that's not your aim, right?) but as far as I see, that's probably the only way you are going to get the book published in paper form. (You can always distribute it in electronic form online by yourself, but it helps to have a paper edition.)
One thing that kind of gets me scatching my head (I'm sure its my intellectual shortcomings, not those who initate these projects) is the idea that "I'll finish this then release it as open source". I've seen the same thing with software projects where people say "I'll release the code once I've cleaned it up".
A better approach to my mind would be to start it open source from the get-go. Put your outline, rough content, ideas, etc. out there, and get peer review throughout the process. I'm sure people could contribute to every stage as you write the work, and opening it up in SOME format (it doesn't have to be pretty) wouldn't be too time consuming.
For what its worth...
My own book (The Instructional Use of Learning Objects) is available online for free (under the OPL) as well as in costs-money print form. Not only does this give you the opportunity to have people submit live errata, etc., but the electronic version of the book is the best press the print version could get. We pre-sold around 500 copies before the book was even to the printer by having the material online.
The other great opportunity afforded by having the book online is the community / discussion you can facilitate if you can convince your publisher to put the URL to the free online version on the cover of your printed book (this was not so easy for me).
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid took a similar approach with The Social Life of Information.
What's wrong with the GNU Documentation License?
The FSF.
So far, this is somewhat like what Bruce Eckel is doing. First, you give something back to the community, but you still can make some money, without having your work stolen.
But, add the following clauses to your copyright:
Just my $0.02.
The Open Content licenses of course, plus the GNU Free Documentation License and the Design Science license. There are undoubtedly others, but these are the ones I'm familiar with.
I'm currently planning / writing an open source book (" Object Oriented Software Development with PHP ") myself, so I'm interested in other people's experiences, too. I use DocBook to write the book and CVS to manage the XML files. I chose the Open Publication License (OPL), because I think it fits my needs best. Although I just started last week, the first pages are already online, so that I can recieve feedback from readers even at this early stage of writing. This helps in finding topics I should focus on, because there's more interest in it by my prospect readers. HTH, Sebastian
Why does everything have to be some sort of 'Open Source'? Long live public domain!!!!
I'll even volunteer to write the AD/NDS/Streettalk/OpenLDAP integration chapters, if you like. My copy of VINES arrived only yesterday, and I'm itching to have some fun with it.
I would separate each chapter to be checked out as a whole from CVS.
Version control is indispensible for stuff like this, yet people rarely think to use it.
Do you want to just give the book away for anyone to do anything with? Then just release the book into the public domain.
Do you want to allow free redistribution, but restrict people from making any changes? Then say that in your license.
Do you want to allow changes, but want the changes to be clearly attributed to the new authors? Then say that.
These things aren't rocket science. Just say what you want to happen with your book in clear straitforward language and that is how it will be.
-- Never make a general statement.
I apologize if this sounds like a flame or a stupid comment, since that's not how it's intended, but I don't think it reaslly matters which open license you use for this project. If the book is readily copyable and worth reading, it will get copied and plagiarized all over the place. You say you're interested in helping others, something more people around here should do, IMO, so I'd say just concentrate on making the book's content worthwhile, and everything else will take care of itself.
You have to be careful when dealing with many paper book publishers when discussing publishing something developed from the Internet. This territory is unfamiliar, and will often lead to dire consequences if all parties involved don't understand what's going on. Take the case of Eric Weisstein, author of the CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics. His book was based off of years of his own work on his website, Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics, and some collaboration from outside sources. After CRC published the book, they demanded that the website be taken down, effectively ending all collaborative work on the project. You can read more about the incident here. One calendar year and lots of litigation later, the website is back online. Don't let this happen to you.
Free messageboards and more! Your girlfriend's seen myWang
My personal recommendation would be The GNU Free Documentation License:
But I think we should talk about much more important issue, i.e. how to print a book with such free license. I suppose most of publishers are used to intellectual property and would rather choose some traditional, more restrictive license than the FDL.So here's my question: No matter what free license we choose, where should we look for publishers, who will want to print our books?
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
Put your money where your mouth is. You work on something for a year, release all rights, and give it away. Show us how its done!
dsl.org has Linux Cookbook which is an open source book that seems to be doing really well as a "real" book. The real sources used to write the book and publish it are put up on the web for free...
You're asking /. for legal advice on open-source books? That's insane. /. Go ask a lawyer or something, not open-source software zealots for this.
You want actual advice? Go use the GPL or something, I guess.
I've used them for all my arcade articles. And you know what? When another site stole my material, they stood 100% behind me. (Not referring to the E10k review that was on Slashdot. I'm talking about my arcade game parts primer material.
And, of course, as the person above said, you can print a book, too. I recommend this license. You can go to their page and check out the terms to see if they are to your liking.
"I'm writing a book ... can someone give me advice on how to write?"
And I've decided to become a millionaire. Come somebody give me advice on how to make lots of money?
Well, are they already armed. They wouldn't be doing very well as robbers otherwise.
On the other hand, I think that your general idea has merit. I am generally against entitlement programs, but I would be for spending tax dollars to arm decent people living in neighborhoods with crime problems.
Of course, I wouldn't vote for a Green just because that was on his agenda. I am, after all, not a Communist.
As a final note for anyone other than "Ralph", let me say that I disapprove of his language, use of bold, and his general trollness. I normally wouldn't have replied to this sort of thing, but, as I said, his general idea has merit.
-Peter
It's too restrictive. Use a license which allows the entire book or parts of it to be incorporated into another documentation work so that the book could be indexed/searchable and included in online encyclopedias.
GNU tends to have harmful side effects such as letting RMS claim ownership of work he did not do.
A bad thing. I see RMS and eventually his big evil non-profit corporation suing anyone in sight to get tribute payments paid to GNU.
Try this: Applying Copyleft to Non-Software Information on Michael Stutz' DSL site. He's applied copyleft to writing.
One useful place to ask this question (other than slashdot might be the Studio B mailing list.
You can read the archives here: http://www.studiob.com/mailinglist.asp
A large number of technical book authors share their (sometimes insightful) views on the list.
When I (co-)wrote PHP & MySQL Web Development I found that mailing list really useful. From the archives, you can get a pretty good idea what issues other authors face.
If other people weren't allowed to sell it, it wouldn't be open source. A GPL-style license like the GFDL doesn't protect the author from the situation you describe; it encourages it.
there's always some asshole that wants to make a buck at someone else's expense.
Do you think Linus Torvalds considers Red Hat to be a bunch of "assholes?"
Your remark about selling a thousand copies on E-Bay is naive. If you want to think about it realistically, very few books make much money for their authors. Most copylefted books that are available in print are self-published, and it's not easy to sell a thousand copies of a self-published book. If you really want to pay the rent by writing books, basically you need to pick one of the more lucrative categories (cookbooks, romance novels,...), and work at it full time.
Find free books.
Doh -- I don't know why I said that. That's not true. What I should have said was that most copylefted books are not print-published. (For data, see my sig.)
Anyway, as we say in the sciences, an error has been discovered on page 1 of the paper, which invalidates all the later equations. However, none of the paper's conclusions are affected. :-)
Could someone mod down both this commend and its parent? My karma's too high anyway...
Find free books.
why don't you just copyright the book and then make it freely available, with a statement like "you MAY copy any part of this book without obtaining the permission of the author, provided you give credit" etc etc..
The FDP is run exactly like an open source project; in fact, it shares a single CVS repository with the source of the operating system, and the ports tree containing ports of third party applications. It's authored in (slightly amended) Docbook by a diverse collection of people around the world, and they seem to have the technicalities of distributed authoring and editing down pat.
geeks are not suppossed to reinvent the wheel.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I think that the FDL is the Free Documentation License which is most clearly formulated, so it is unlikely that one will run into trouble if using it.
However, it has it's problems too. My project is mostly about making tutorials, and one important part of it is to encourage people to make printed booklets and distribute freely.
The problem is that the FDL requires that you include a full copy of the License with any copy you make. That would defeat the purpose of the booklet: You can't make a 4-page booklet if you would have to include a 4-page copy of the license.
That's the main problem with the FDL. I've been communicating with FSF on this, and apparently, it is not really a problem with FDL, but with copyright law. You have to include a license, or people would have to assume the worst (i.e. you only have fair use rights. Besides, most people don't think they have fair use rights either, because of all the propaganda, so they will not make a copy even if you tell them to...)
The FSF's best suggestion is that I, as the copyright holder, grant an individual license to everyone who wants to make a booklet. I think this is a sub-optimal solution, because the people who join me in making content needs predictability too. They need to know under what conditions the stuff they write will be distributed.
Take, as an example, the GnuPG Keysigning Party HOWTO. It links the FDL. When I organized a keysigning party, I handed out a paper copy of parts of the HOWTO to every participant, without a copy of the licence. In doing that, I think I broke the FDL (I plead "not guilty" your honor, I didn't understand the FDL at that time! :-) ). But, I think that is how everyone would do it, and in fact, I think it is how the author intended it to be. Actually, I don't think the author followed the instructions in the FDL either.
I guess I have made this point: The FDL requires that you include a full copy of the License with every copy you make, but nobody is going to do that with simple handouts.
BTW, I'm having a bit of problem hosting this project for the next couple of months... Anybody have a web server with a little bandwidth to spare?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
One of the finest books ever written on English usage and style is Fowler's "Dictionary of Modern English Usage". It's sometimes out-of-print because it's very old but it's always in good libraries. You might find many useful tips in this excellent book. For example, you could improve your posting by omitting the redundant word "personally" ("I" is always personal), despite the phrase being widespread in colloquial US English. Another example is the final word in your remark, "A, B and C,[comma] the works" which is slang and which could either be omitted or replaced by "etc".
Did I mention that many of might want to pick up a copy of Days of Love, Nights of War? It's spectacular in ways I can't express
bacchusrx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
Hi, my name is Carey Bunks, and I have written two OS books: Grokking the Gimp and The Lasso: A Rational Guide to Trick Roping.
Here are my two cents on writing books, and on the theory that community participation benefits a book in the same way it benefits code (correcting errors, keeping it up to date, etc). I suspect that this theory is wrong except for some special cases (for example, dictionaries). However, I can warmly recommend the idea of making a book open.
I claim that writing a good book is very different than writing good code. Generally, good code should be well organized, carefully designed, with its components being as modular and as independent as possible. If successful, the result should be an application that evolves more gracefully, and is more easily updated and maintained by multiple developers.
A good book should be well organized, however, does not, indeed must not be modular. Why? Because a human mind does not understand nor process the words in a book the way a computer does a program. Humans like good organization. However, the brain also needs association of ideas and redundancy. We humans like to see the connections between things, and we need to be constantly reminded.
So, although a table of contents may be very organized, a good book contains chapters that are hardly modular. Good chapters should be rich with references to other parts of the book, showing how the ideas presented in different parts work together. Furthermore, chapters will often contain redundant recaps of other chapters, again showing how the pieces fit together. When there is enough of this type of self-referencing, it creates a synergy that helps readers better understand and better appreciate the material.
My conclusion is that a book is more like a cathedral than a bazaar. It requires a master architect who conceives the original design, and then literally weaves the many threads together into a single whole. The very nature of the work resists participation or subsequent updating by third parties. Thus, trying to update chapters is likely to make a book incoherent as the relevancy of references and the synergy of ideas start to break down.
Second, my theory on writing a good book is coherent with the above discussion. I believe that the most important process in writing a good book is re-reading and re-writing. It's kind of like refactoring of code, except instead of making the resulting book more modular, it makes it more connected. As the book starts to take form (near the end of the first draft), it is important to intensely review what has been written. This will give rise to all sorts of small scale revisions -- spelling, grammar, and sentence construction corrections. However, it also allows the author to revisit the overall connectedness of the work. Does the story hold together? Is it coherent? Does it provide insight into the underlying concepts presented by the book? This is the most valuable part of the revision process.
Finally, let's face the facts. The way the publishing industry works, it is very difficult to make any money writing. There are some counter-examples to this, however, the overwhelming majority of books make less than $10k for their authors. Compared to the 6 to 9 months of full-time work needed to produce a quality book, you are better off not trying to write for a living. Thus, it is unlikely that deciding to make a book open will ruin its economic potential. However, in some cases, I think that making a book OS can help improve its market share (see my thoughts on this in this interview on LWN). On the other hand, creating a book is a very rewarding personal experience, and can definitely improve ones professional profile.
that's the key to world domination
thats why microsoft invented shared source license