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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."
Are the two licenses incompatable, or are they just trying to start a competing product? This is a serious question, I've not read the details of either license, and I think competition is good for all involved.
On the other hand, if the licenses are compatable, why not borrow (attributed of course) material back and forth between the two.
It certainly seems (by looking at the two sites) that WikiBooks are quite a bit further along in the game.
Expect to see a fight. Do you have any idea how much money is made from the sale of outrageously over-priced textbooks? I fully expect to see our publishing corporate taskmasters to fight this. I would love to see universities and colleges actually start using these online books as the required texts for their classes.
The thing about OSS vs. OS Books is that software requires individuals who have a knowledge of coding and developing software to write it, there-by limiting the number of yokels who attempt to contribute. With text-books, especially interperative subjects such as History or English, much of the material may end up weighted unfairly. Now the same could be said of traditional books, but with only one or a few authors, accountability is fairly easy. Perhaps this effort would be better served towards checking existing books' material for accuracy. But most of this arguement is nil when applied to this particular book, since in Math there are generally only right and wrong answers (the lower math that this covers at least).
in bed.
My bad experiences with college textbooks fall into two categories:
1. Overpriced and worthless
2. Overpriced
My first Fortran textbook, in 1975, read like a PhD dissertation and taught nothing about coding but cost a bundle. (I'm sure the author felt great pride that his book had been assigned.) The same trend has followed in almost every tech course I've taken, until recently--books seem to be getting better, more practical.
I've learned more from two weeks of Googling on some subjects than in entire college courses. Education has to change to accommodate new modes of learning, and open textbooks make sense. At least they introduce into the diploma-mill sensibility of college accreditation the egalitarian notion that ideas are what matter, not who wrote what.
It's called 'Physics Handbook' (well, in spanish :P), from MIR Editors. The notation was a little different than the usual, but if you have one of Landau's books, you should have no problem. The funny thing is that the books were available to us under the right-wing dictatorship we lived at that time ("they're SOVIET books, it's just communist propaganda"), and they were unbelieveably cheap (it is more expensive to photocopy the book). Dover books seem expensive in comparison.
I don't know if there was such a thing as a copyright in Soviet Russia (can somebody shed some light on this?), but I agree with the parent poster: it would be a really Good Thing(TM) to have these books around again: maybe reedited in dead-tree form by some editor, maybe an online version...