Slashdot Mirror
Collaborative Online Textbook Project
rocketjam writes "OpenTextBook.org is a new project to create a free, open text book 'collaboratively written by anyone on the internet', using a Creative Commons license. Citing the free software development model and the philosophy that underlies much of that effort, OpenTextBook.org's introduction says this philosophy should apply 'at its most basic to the learning of science.' They hope the project will help to counter the current governmental trend of strengthening the scope, duration and rights of intellectual property owners while cutting back on the fair use rights of individuals. The current state of the project is available as a daily snapshot pdf file which contains the introduction to the project and 9 chapters mostly covering math at this time."
Competition might be good when all project involved have a lot of people (or money) behind them, but I think these free book projects are lacking volunteers.
Wikimedia Foundation, the one that also hosts Wikipedia, has a similar project called Wikibooks. It also runs on the same MediaWiki software as Wikipedia, and the contents are licensed under the GFDL.
Wikipedia is not what you're looking before. Wikibooks is. Both are projects of the Wikimedia foundation (which uses the MediaWiki software).
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
If OpenTextBooks.org use a license with a strong copyleft, then they are likely incompatible (i cannot get to the page with thier license right now b/c of stupid webfilters at work), but the two groups could probably come to a consensus (most copyleft licenses, I've noticed, don't differ from one another much). Also if their is some kind of forced contribution, ala the MPL, then there is a conflict with the licenses, which would leave WikkiBooks able to share, but not able to freely take.
If OTB.org is using something ala the BSD license, then WikkiBooks can take all they want, but OTB.org could be potentially left out in the cold.
my pet machine
The given Creative Commons license prohibits commercial usage of the material. The GNU FDL permits it - for example, the German Wikipedia is now selling printed copies of its first WikiReader book. This makes it impossible to import OpenTextBook content into Wikipedia.
The other way round, the GNU FDL requires that all derivative works permit commercial usage as well, which makes it impossible to put WikiBooks content into OpenTextBook (copyleft). Fair use would be an exception.
I love C++
The two licenses are CERTAINLY incompatible. Prohibiting commercial usage of the materials is in express opposition to the great work of the GFDL folks, who far from prohibiting commercial redistribution, actually encourage such behavior with this phrase from the license: "either commercially or noncommercially."
That particular Creative Commons license totally bites. If I contribute to one of the books, I can't sell a copy of it when I'm done. Huh?
The introduction to the text explains all of this; it's written in TeX (PDF is just used as a common publishing format) with the graphics rendered via gnuplot or as an .eps file; it sounds like they're making it a priority to stick to free, open, commonly available formats and protocols (no Mathematica plots for instance).
If you find this interesting, check out my Free Curriculum Project and the Free High School Science Texts project (to which I am a very minor contributor).
Both of these projects use the FDL.
-Peter
"Apparently, they intend to publish something on paper. That costs money."
:) But I'm just talking about getting a book into print. Not much to it.
Not much. You can get a book published and on Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and the other internet bookstores for under $500, assuming you have all of the talent to produce the content. Basically, all you _have_ to have are ISBN's ($350 for 10, I think) and a lightningsource.com account ($150 per ISBN), and everything is taken care of. Well, you need to promote it
Actually, if you don't care about which distribution channels you go through, you can do it through CafePress.com for free (they don't care if you don't have an ISBN).
Engineering and the Ultimate
www.campusbookstore.com
... and can be found for roughly $4 in India. :)
... plan ahead, find out what texts you need, and import them. I ordered three texts from the UK, and even with shipping saved $30 on each one. Not too bad for a little bit of work and some web browsing.
This is the student-owned-and-non-profit-organization-run bookstore at Queen's. Originally formed by the Engineering Society some 80-odd years ago to sell supplies to eng students, it is now the source of all textbooks sold NEW on campus.
Their prices are basically as low as they can go and still break even (non-profit). However, if you check out Amazon.com.uk and compare some prices there, you'll soon find that textbooks there are cheaper in some cases.
Why?
Because publishing companies have different prices for different countries, and different continents.
If you really want cheap textbooks, find someone from India and have them bring back all your books from there when they come back to school in the fall. *The* textbook on electronics (Sedra & Smith) is roughly $155 CAD
It's a rip-off
A good open source Applied Math text.
If they want to toss together a bunch of math definitions, they should be more honest that they are just creating a reference. Yet PlanetMath is already doing this, with the Free Encyclopedia of Mathematics.
In general a textbook requires a high degree of cohesion and singular vision; this may not be compatible with a commons-based project style at all.
Our University Bookstore was outrageous; if you can buy elsewhere, do it!
After spending nearly $400 on two semesters' worth of books at a community college, I got fed up and went online to see what I could find. I found that buying used books online almost *always* saved you money as compared to the exame same books (even used) at a college bookstore.
Although I hate to promote eBay and its ilk, sellers on half.com came in as the best bargain. You just have to order the books well in advance and well before the semester starts to both save money and return the book to the seller if he or she wasn't completely honest about the condition of the book.
As a side note, after the semester was over, I turned around the resold the books and came quite close to getting all of my money back on them.
There is an extensive listing (with ratings) of free books at http://www.theassayer.org/. This listing is administered by Ben Crowell a physics prof out in California who has some physics texts available at http://www.lightandmatter.com/ with an open source license. Some of the other listed books are free of cost but not open source.
His "Light and Matter" physics series is "an introductory physics textbook for life-science students" available in PDF as well as some sections in LaTeX format.
His "Simple Nature" text is "a physics textbook intended for students in a three-semester introductory calculus-based course. It's free in digital form, but is not yet available in print." This complete text is available in PDF as well as LaTeX format.
There is also "Discover Physics" which is "a conceptual physics textbook intended for students in a nonmathematical one-semester general-education course."
There is also a text by Raymond (also free as in speech) called "A Radically Modern Approach to Introductory Physics" from http://kestrel.nmt.edu/~raymond/teaching.html in LaTeX format.
- - http://www.opensourcetext.org - -
has been collaborating with Wikipedia on a K-12 (public high school) World History project. The project is based on California State Board of Education Framework standards.
The idea is to create a pilot basd on strict curriculum framework adherence, as this is the **only** way to get **any** state board of education to approve the end product for local school district use.
I would encourage anyone who is expert in World History to contribute to this project here
- - http://wikibooks.org/wiki/World_History_Project_-_ Contents - -
The goal of this project is to prove the concept. Once that's done, may other curriculum areas can be constructed - including those that deviate from curriculum frameworks.
A further goal is to have the resulting files generate a 'print-on-demand' file because the end product should be a printed text.
COSTP has shown that the cost of an open source K-12 (printed)textbook (hardcover)is 40-50% cheaper than K-12 textbooks published and distributed by commercial publishers.
Lastly, if you want to contribute content to the project, please contribute *only* your own (original)work. Content that is already copyrighted is not welcome/ We want to show State Boards of Education that open source textbook publishing can save the states - collectively - *billions* of dollars. e.g. California spends $400M+ every year on K-12 textbooks, with prices having risen at three times the rate of inflation since 1992.
COSTP is an official collaborator with Creative Commons, and was a recent participant in forging the Creative Commons educationsal license.
Also, we hope n the future to work with the Connexions Project
http://cnx.rice.edu/
at Rice University, to get further tests piloted.
Yes the two licenses are incompatible. I'm a contributor to both the Wikipedia (GFDL) and the linuxquestions.org wiki (Creative Commons). It's a real pain to have to do an article on RMS over again, with all the inevitable flamewars involved, when there's an "open" article just over there... The Creative Commons (by-sa to be exact) is better for this sort of thing (the GFDL can mean that a 1-2 page article comes with 12 pages of legalese). But the Wikipedia was started before the Creative Commons, and migrating is non-trivial since the individual contributors (many of whom are anons) are the real copyright holders. If anybody wants to do a wiki encyclopedia under the Creative Commons, let me know.