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?"
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!"
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?
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 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?
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.
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 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.
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 $$$
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...
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.
If you are going to mirror, at least give credit where credit is due.
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
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.
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
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bacchusrx.
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