“Prentice Hall is publishing a line of computer books, the ‘Bruce Perens’ Open Source Series.’ The first titles have already arrived for sale in bookstores like Barnes & Noble, and the electronic versions are expected to be available online soon afterward–and to be free. All the books–a total of six are planned for this year–will be published not under a traditional copyright but under the Open Publication License, which was created in 1999 by David Wiley, an assistant professor at Utah State University. The license allows people to copy, modify and redistribute works. It is modeled after the General Public License for software, which sets the rules for information-sharing and reuse of code for the GNU Linux operating system (www.opencontent.org). ‘If you want to take one these books, put it on a photocopy machine and make copies, that’s cool,’ said Mr. Perens, a leading open-source advocate.” – New York Times, Jan. 13.
The TeleRead take: Way to go, Prentice Hall. The idea is for the publisher to earn goodwill among open-source advocates, and methinks they’ll be successful–as long as PH doesn’t suddenly slam the door on such innovations lickety-split, once the buyers are already reeled in. The other caveat is the same as expressed about Cory Doctorow’s similarly laudable experiment. What happens when technology makes e-books easier to read, and there’s less incentive to buy the p-books? By the way, it would have been nice if the New York Times had used a different headline from “Steal This Book? A Publisher is Making It Easy.” Open source is sharing, not stealing, and while the headline writer meant to be entertaining, certain readers just might take it the wrong way.
