Tackling Open-Source Book Projects? 135
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?"
A great site for open source books (Score:1, Informative)
Re:A great site for open source books (Score:2, Informative)
If you are going to mirror, at least give credit where credit is due.
Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
[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...]
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't really understand the problem. As you point out, somebody could do the same with a Linux distro, or any other piece of OSS. Generally, customers won't be stupid enough to shell out much dough for a product that they could obtain for no cost, unless they feel that they're getting something for what they're spending (like the printing and binding.)
The danger would come from somebody attempting to claim a new copyright on your work (fairly easy to deal with, if you register your work), or somebody modifying and redistributing it as their own work. In either situation, you've got a decent court case. I don't know how strong OSS licenses may be in the print arena, but if you did have to go to court, I think you'd have at least an even shot. Hopefully, nobody would be stupid enough to test you.
The author could always keep an eye out for somebody trying to do this, and potentially undercut him/her by selling copies for a lower price.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
I don't know how strong OSS licenses may be in the print arena, but if you did have to go to court, I think you'd have at least an even shot.
No offense, but it sounds YANAL. Which means that you really don't have any idea what kind of "shot" Wheeler would have in court (and neither do I). Thinking that there would be an "even shot" is logical, rational, etc. The courts don't follow yours and my logic, unfortunately. If there is any serious worry about handling potential OSS violations, then the author(s) should contact an IP lawyer before publishing anything at all.
Re:Hmm (Score:1)
Why in god's name would I take offense at that?
You're right, of course. The author should talk to an IP lawyer. Who'll probably tell him/her the same thing. That these licenses (which were put together by IP lawyers) have never been tested, are fairly experimental, etc. Then the author will just have to take a chance. Really, any situation that involves going to court could be considered something of a loss, anyway, given the cost.
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Interesting)
If you do have a good book that is worth real money. What publishing house wouldn't want to publish and profit on it....when they can get the content for free....and so easily.
Its way too easy to be taken advantage of.
I think an OpenSource/Non-profit publishing house would be preferable. And that distributing of hard-copies of the book by anyone except the OpenSource publishing house should be strictly forbidden.
Open source means they can sell it. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
mod me down (Score:1)
Doh -- I don't know why I said that. That's not true. What I should have said was that most copylefted books are not print-published. (For data, see my sig.)
Anyway, as we say in the sciences, an error has been discovered on page 1 of the paper, which invalidates all the later equations. However, none of the paper's conclusions are affected. :-)
Could someone mod down both this commend and its parent? My karma's too high anyway...
Put all the content in Wikipedia (Score:4, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.com].
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.
Re:Put all the content in Wikipedia (Score:1, Informative)
A couple of points (from a Wikipedian):
1. Wikipedia currently uses the GNU Free Documentation License; we didn't formulate our own.
2. Wikipedia isn't a general content repository, but an encyclopedia project. The project welcomes articles on all topics under the sun, but entire books aren't our mandate.
That being said, anyone can set up a wiki and develop any type of content. All you need is a webserver and some software. Wikipedia uses UseModWiki [usemod.com], which is written in Perl and is under the GPL. --Stephen Gilbert [wikipedia.com]
Re:Put all the content in Wikipedia (Score:2)
1. Wikipedia isn't currently actually compliant with the GNU FDL, since it doesn't have the necessary license notice. Also, the intent of the Bomis people is slightly out of sync with what the GFDL allows (with respect to attribution), though their hearts are in the right place.
Instead of adding something to Wikipedia, just release the book under the GNU FDL. Then content from the book could be incorporated into Wikipedia by anyone who wants to.
The GFDL seems overly ornate, but I've done a careful analysis of it, and particularly for print works it's concise and complete, especially if you don't have any invariant sections.
If that's the case, then all you have to do to be compliant with the GFDL is include the license and the license notice, make it clear what the title, author, and publisher are, and make available a "transparent" copy (e.g. a url to an ASCII/Tex etc. version of the book).
Not sure what license their using, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not sure what license their using, but... (Score:3, Informative)
According to their website [oreilly.com], when you sign a contract with O'Reilly you give them "the exclusive right to print, publish, distribute, and sell copies of the book, and works derived from the book, in printed form and in electronic media such as CD-ROM, and to license others to do so, for the duration of the copyright in the book, in all languages, throughout the world."
That isn't open or free by any stretch of the imagination, so if you want your book to be freely available, O'Reilly isn't your best bet.
Re:Not sure what license their using, but... (Score:1)
--dave, the second author
Re:Not sure what license their using, but... (Score:1)
Re:Not sure what license their using, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Not sure what license their using, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Here's your license (Score:2, Funny)
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?
basic editing principles (Score:1, Offtopic)
I don't have much experience in writing OS books, but I would say, start with your basics:
Outline what you plan to do
Get a rough idea of chapters, etc.
get a rough draft
submit it to friends for editing/proofreading, etc.
get it back, "spice" it up some, re-submit for editing.
Have them check this version out and make any additional changes, etc...and submit for our approval
btw, this is all basic stuff, but I wanted to help and this is all I had to offer.
Guess that makes me pathetic
Get the best of both worlds... (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Re:Get the best of both worlds... (Score:1)
I would be very surprised if greater than 50% of the people who read that book (or any free online book) pay for a copy. If Stephen King couldn't do it [com.com], then it certainly can't be commonplace.
Re:Get the best of both worlds... (Score:1)
Re:Get the best of both worlds... (Score:1)
Re:Get the best of both worlds... (Score:2)
Additionally, Stephen King is a well-known hardcopy author. There probably aren't that many people who found out about him by doing a web search for horror novels, found his book, read it online, and considered paying for it.
On the other hand, if 25% of the people who read the book online pay for a copy, and more than 4 times as many people read it because it should up conveniently in a web search on the subject and they can read it without paying for a book by an author they don't know, he comes out ahead anyway.
The money he fails to make on the people who don't buy it when they read it is probably much much less than the money he'd have to spend on advertizing in order to get the same number of people to read it. The cost of promoting a book (unless you're Stephen King, and don't need to promote it) is greater than the rest of the costs of publication combined.
Re:Get the best of both worlds... (Score:2)
1. King told his readers he'd stop writing chapters if he didn't get payments from 50% (?) of them.
2. It was a failure. He didn't get the payment rate he'd said he'd require. He lowered the requirement, and still didn't get the requested percentage. After that, he stopped writing, and he hasn't finished the book.
3. The basic concept was completely alien to the kind of open-source philosophy that the original poster was talking about. There was no concept of enriching the general pool of human knowledge. It was just an experiment with unconventional marketing techniques. I'm not saying this makes King bad and evil; he just wasn't doing anything related to free information.
Re:Get the best of both worlds... (Score:1)
Re:Get the best of both worlds... (Score:2)
Chances are if this person went to get his book published, the publisher would then own the right to reproduce the book. Most publishers would not let you write a book and give it away electronically as well (unless you are steven king, etc.).
They just don't think it would make good business sense, and most publishers probably are in the business to make money, not for good will.
I think like you though, if it can be done, it would be a great solution. It won't be easy, though (getting a book published is very hard for those alredy not published).
Re:Get the best of both worlds... (Score:2)
They just don't think it would make good business sense, and most publishers probably are in the business to make money, not for good will.
Clearly your generalization fails in some of the cases I mentioned above. I think some publishers have realized that, at least for certain kinds of books, having it available online is a form of free publicity, and doesn't necessarily subtract from sales. After all, most people don't want to read a book off of a computer screen, or have to have it in the form of a stack of unbound, single-sided printer output. Personally (here's my shameless plug), I've had some luck selling printed copies of my own [lightandmatter.com] self-published copylefted books, even though they're free downloads.
In reply to the original poster's question, you might want to look at (shameless plug #2!) this [theassayer.org] list of copylefted books, which is from the database of my book-reviewing site The Assayer. That way you can get an idea of what licenses other people are using.
Re:Get the best of both worlds... (Score:1)
While many publishers are expermenting with online distribution for profit (i.e. Safari the O'Reilly / PTG online thing), most publisher relize that putting a book online actually increases book sales (unless of course the book is bad to begin with).
Re:Get the best of both worlds... (Score:1)
Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure I understand this.... (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:I'm not sure I understand this.... (Score:2)
That's why they use the words software and program in the GPL [fsf.org]
Re:This better not be real (Score:2)
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
Re:I'm not sure I understand this.... (Score:1, Insightful)
GPL was designed for interpreted programs (like emacs) or compiled programs, so anyone would look at how they worked, make changes, recompile, and distribute their chages.
A book is text on a page. Or in a file. If it's printed, you can't prevent the purchaser from making annotations, underlining passages, etc. If it's a text (or even Word) file, you can't prevent someone from editing or printing it. Sure, you can distribute it in a compiled format, like PDF, DVI, or Postscript, but the user can print it out and annotate it.
So think about what your goal with the text is, and what control you do or don't want over it.
Re:I'm not sure I understand this.... (Score:1)
Free vs. open-source (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [c2.com] model.
Re:Free vs. open-source (Score:1)
You can either completely give up your copyright as the writer of the work (why would you do that?) or use what GNU recommends - free documentation license FDL [gnu.org] to make sure you get proper credit, retain some rights, give others rights to modify, redistribute, etc., etc.
Re:Free vs. open-source (Score:2)
.
What's wrong with the GNU Documentation License? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What's wrong with the GNU Documentation License (Score:1, Funny)
The FSF.
My free documentation project (Score:2)
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 [cryptnet.net]. 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?
Re:My free documentation project (Score:2)
However, I'm in Norway, so I could find out whether it would be sufficient according to Norwegian copyright law.
Clearinghouse for editorial contributors (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Clearinghouse for editorial contributors (Score:1)
Dan
Re:Clearinghouse for editorial contributors (Score:1)
Re:Clearinghouse for editorial contributors (Score:1)
I don't know if there is, but I certainly think it would be a good idea to set one up. Contact me if you don't know where to start.
Meanwhile, I contribute my own favorite open document site: Andamooka [andamooka.org]
It's a slash site, so people can login and contribute annotations. I don't think it has any provision for copy editing yet, but I think it should have.
"Open Source" contract with publisher (Score:1)
Open Book approach (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:Open Book approach (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been considering doing this very thing. Here's what I've come up with. Most of these apply equally well to books and programming projects.
Personally, I'd recommend having some sort of functional product before releasing anything as open source. The exception (which totally doesn't apply to me!) is if you have a big enough name or big enough project to put something together on the strength of that alone. Imagine one of the big KDE/GNOME developers starting a new component system from scratch, in public. It works; they get all kinds of developers willing to work with them before even a single line of code is written. Now imagine me, "Jerf from Slashdot", making the same (kind of) announcement. The silence is deafening.
Re:Open Book approach (Score:2, Interesting)
Despite what Eric Raymond says, the vast majority of open source development is not done collaboratively. A few high profile projects like the Linux kernel and KDE do work that way, but almost everyone else works singly or in small groups. Putting some preliminary work on the web is unlikely to get you any useful help and, as you said, if anything projects that have a public roadmap before making anything useful are mostly regarded as sinkholes.
Imagine one of the big KDE/GNOME developers starting a new component system from scratch, in public. It works; they get all kinds of developers willing to work with them before even a single line of code is written.
Even that -- I'm sure Miguel had tons of volunteers to work on Mono but I wonder how many serious developers actually came out of it.
Go both print and online... (Score:4, Informative)
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 [slofi.com].
AGREE: OpenContent License (Score:2)
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.
Re:AGREE: OpenContent License (Score:1)
I think it's a good license.
Copyright with a clause (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Of course there are applicable licenses (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Of course there are applicable licenses (Score:1)
Much of the Open Content license appears to be geared toward software documentation, while the open publication license is more flexible. But I do have a question (I probably should have started a new thread). Does anyone know of a use of the Open Publication license outside of Geekhood? I am working on a book proposal for a non-geek book, and am wondering if I can point potential publishers to precedents for use of things like the open publication license.
Re:Of course there are applicable licenses (Score:1)
OPL, DocBook (Score:3, Informative)
Public Domain (Score:3, Informative)
Why does everything have to be some sort of 'Open Source'? Long live public domain!!!!
Hey, cool idea. (Score:1)
Definitely use cvs (Score:3, Interesting)
Version control is indispensible for stuff like this, yet people rarely think to use it.
What do you want the license to do? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Be Careful with the Publisher (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Be Careful with the Publisher (Score:2, Interesting)
So in addition to doing a lot of TeX and Tib work to get the bibliography part printed usably, I wrote what you will find at the other end of clbib@csli.stanford.edu [mailto] with the subject "help". (I expect that it has been completely rewritten now. I certainly hope it has.) I've just tested it and it appears that it is either down, removed entirely, or no longer responds immediately..
Anyway, I never dealt with Chicago University Press directly, but I was told that they were convinced in the end that making the information available that way helped sales of the printed book.
More important: how to find a publisher? (Score:3, Informative)
My personal recommendation would be The GNU Free Documentation License [gnu.org]:
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?
Linux Cookbook is a real "Free" book (Score:3, Interesting)
Studio B Mailing List (Score:1)
One useful place to ask this question (other than slashdot might be the Studio B mailing list.
You can read the archives here: http://www.studiob.com/mailinglist.asp [studiob.com]
A large number of technical book authors share their (sometimes insightful) views on the list.
When I (co-)wrote PHP & MySQL Web Development [amazon.com] I found that mailing list really useful. From the archives, you can get a pretty good idea what issues other authors face.
copyright (Score:1)
Public Domain (Score:1)
How about the CrimethInc "copyright?" (Score:2)
Did I mention that many of might want to pick up a copy of Days of Love, Nights of War? It's spectacular in ways I can't express
bacchusrx.
Re:How about the CrimethInc "copyright?" (Score:2)
In any case, many of you might want to check out Days of War, Nights of Love . *sigh*
bacchusrx
My Experience Writing OS Books (Score:1)
Here are my two cents on writing books, and on the theory that community participation benefits a book in the same way it benefits code (correcting errors, keeping it up to date, etc). I suspect that this theory is wrong except for some special cases (for example, dictionaries). However, I can warmly recommend the idea of making a book open.
I claim that writing a good book is very different than writing good code. Generally, good code should be well organized, carefully designed, with its components being as modular and as independent as possible. If successful, the result should be an application that evolves more gracefully, and is more easily updated and maintained by multiple developers.
A good book should be well organized, however, does not, indeed must not be modular. Why? Because a human mind does not understand nor process the words in a book the way a computer does a program. Humans like good organization. However, the brain also needs association of ideas and redundancy. We humans like to see the connections between things, and we need to be constantly reminded.
So, although a table of contents may be very organized, a good book contains chapters that are hardly modular. Good chapters should be rich with references to other parts of the book, showing how the ideas presented in different parts work together. Furthermore, chapters will often contain redundant recaps of other chapters, again showing how the pieces fit together. When there is enough of this type of self-referencing, it creates a synergy that helps readers better understand and better appreciate the material.
My conclusion is that a book is more like a cathedral than a bazaar. It requires a master architect who conceives the original design, and then literally weaves the many threads together into a single whole. The very nature of the work resists participation or subsequent updating by third parties. Thus, trying to update chapters is likely to make a book incoherent as the relevancy of references and the synergy of ideas start to break down.
Second, my theory on writing a good book is coherent with the above discussion. I believe that the most important process in writing a good book is re-reading and re-writing. It's kind of like refactoring of code, except instead of making the resulting book more modular, it makes it more connected. As the book starts to take form (near the end of the first draft), it is important to intensely review what has been written. This will give rise to all sorts of small scale revisions -- spelling, grammar, and sentence construction corrections. However, it also allows the author to revisit the overall connectedness of the work. Does the story hold together? Is it coherent? Does it provide insight into the underlying concepts presented by the book? This is the most valuable part of the revision process.
Finally, let's face the facts. The way the publishing industry works, it is very difficult to make any money writing. There are some counter-examples to this, however, the overwhelming majority of books make less than $10k for their authors. Compared to the 6 to 9 months of full-time work needed to produce a quality book, you are better off not trying to write for a living. Thus, it is unlikely that deciding to make a book open will ruin its economic potential. However, in some cases, I think that making a book OS can help improve its market share (see my thoughts on this in this interview [lwn.net] on LWN). On the other hand, creating a book is a very rewarding personal experience, and can definitely improve ones professional profile.