Prentice Hall To Publish Open Content Licensed Books

lma writes "Bruce Perens has convinced Prentice Hall to publish a series of books under an Open Source license. The 'Bruce Perens' Open Source Series' will be available first as hardcopy in bookstores, and the Open Source text will be available electronically a few months later. Prentice Hall is counting on people buying the books even though the electronic version will be freely available later. I like the model, since I prefer to read paper, but like the electronic version for reference."

Comments

My prediction...

[Anand_S]

The Microsoft Press will be pissed about this. "Open Source books will be the death of the industry!"

Finally, I don't have to...

[jmuzic1]

lug all my books home every day. I can see it now..."Open source may provide treatment for back pain"

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Paper pricing

[Bruce Perens]

Anyone in the know about Open Source will understand that the books are free text when they see my name.

The copyright page says it's OPL licensed, although there is a bug in the copyright page which I will fix in the electronic version, because someone didn't understand the OPL when putting together the copyright page. It goes to the trouble to say that you can use it under the OPL, and then after that says "no copying". Duh!

Bruce

Ripping off college students one edition at a time

[LostCluster]

The books will cost $50-$75 dollars while they're being sold at university bookstores, then released free as soon as the course is over so that the resale value of the book is zero.

However, the free book will be useless for the next semester's courses, because a new edition will have been released to update the book for the changing technologies, of course.

See, it is possible to make big money with open source... although this wasn't what we had in mind.