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Free as in Books?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the spread-the-love-thickly dept.

donkeyDevil writes "Forget free software, contribute to free books! The Chronicle has an interesting story about bookcrossing.com's effort to track feral books through their captors. Read about it, then do it. (Although the focus of the story is on Bay Arean book releasors, it looks like you'd have a better chance of snagging a free book here.)"

5 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Project Guttenberg ... by Aceticon · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... has been going on for a long time making out-of-copyright works available to the public.

    Here you have it: Project Guttenberg

  2. It's worldwide... sort of. by Pembers · · Score: 2, Informative

    When I read the article, I thought "this is a great idea, but I bet it's only happening in big cities in the USA." Then I saw that some guy has "released" four books in Stevenage, Herts, England, not twenty miles from me. Hurrah!

    But you don't have to go outside to find free books. Check the link in my sig for one.

    --

    Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...

  3. Where to find books that are Free as in Freedom by goingware · · Score: 4, Informative
    You can find quite a few books that are published under a variety of licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License at The Assayer.

    The most popular subjects there are "Science, Math and Computing" with 289 titles. There are quite a few other subjects covered there too.

    The Assayer is more than just a list of books though - it has reader-contributed reviews. For example, here is the entry for DocBook: The Definitive Guide by Norman Walsh (available at www.docbook.org). There is a review at the bottom of the entry page.

    I'm writing a Free book, although it is at a very early draft stage. The ZooLib Cookbook is a tutorial for the ZooLib cross-platform application framework.

    I'm also slowly creating a copylefted collection of articles on software quality at the Linux Quality Database.

    --
    -- Could you use my software consulting serv
  4. Booklend on a smaller scale... by cygnusx · · Score: 3, Informative

    This site is similar in spirit, run by one man: www.booklend.net

  5. NPR by sphynxdra · · Score: 2, Informative

    NPR did this story almost two months ago on it's "Weekend Edition Saturday" show. They've set up a web page with expanded coverage, and the site also includes the audio from the broadcast Real Audio Format.