open source style collaboration for books

[jonantice]

There's something I've been wondering about for quite a while now and the more I think about it the more curious I get to know if it would work.
Most open-source programms are developed as collaborative projects that involve, sometimes, many volunteering people (a few of which sometimes aren't even programmers). Collaboration is mainly done over the internet. That's my understanding of how it works.
What I am wondering, after having bought all my junior year college textbooks, worth over $100 each, is if it will ever be viable for a handfull (or maybe more than a handfull) of college profesors (just as an example) to come together (on-line) and work on a textbook, or any kind of book, which is copyrighted but at the same time free to use under the terms of some sort of license. (What I'm getting at is free college textbooks published online). Furthermore, the book (be it a textbook or whatever), could be an ongoing project since there are new editions of books about every 2 years anyways.
You guys are knowledgeble people (some of you anyhow), so what do you think? I know Fingal is sort of a librarian by profession so I would especially be interested in his thoughts on the matter, however don't feel obligated to post.

[fingal]

It's an interesting point jonantice, and in fact some publishers are already giving away 'free' versions of their books online. For example - the Baen Free Library has some free sci-fi books which it publishes on the net.

One reason academic books are so expensive is that they are only designed for a small readership, so shorter print runs mean higher costs. I haven't come across much free academic material recently. In fact online journals usually charge for access, but I like the idea and don't see - in principle - why what you suggest shouldn't happen. It would need a major shift in emphasis from the academic community though. The Bastiat Free University may be as close as you can get to what you are suggesting, but I'm not sure how valid it is.

Most current online books published by Project Gutenberg are free from copyright, so they can be published without the risk of getting sued. The main problem is that people love being paid for publishing their intellectual property, so it would be a labour of love for academics to start giving stuff away. To be honest, the academics I've met were highly skilled at extracting money out of people. This is, I think, a long way from the original idea of learning which universities were founded on.

Despite our rather poor reputation, some of us 'library types' are radical by nature and we love distributing reading material. The web is a great way to do this, and sometimes that material is hidden away behind a subscription of some sort ... Sometimes it costs nothing. Check out this index of resources.

Another problem is getting people to believe in open source and working together more cooperatively. I remember having a publishing lecture from an Emeritus Professor about this. He'd just come back from visiting a publishing house which specialised in producing poetry books and he was shocked to find that they didn't know the first thing about publishing! Right down to the terminology. In my own mind, I don't make much of a distinction between 'open source' and any kind of cooperative working.

He suggested that we get together to form a small publishing cooperative, to produce the kinds of books students would read. I could have done it too, but my fellow students weren't interested. They heard the word 'cooperative' and decided this meant 'no money/a lifetime of poverty'. Funny how many of them either don't work in publishing, or libraries. They simply didn't have the vision or commitment to make it work: even though it would have:

a.) worked very well given our knowledge; and
b.) given us the kind of community outside of work that most people secretly crave.

Thanks for raising an interesting point. One further thing I'd like to say is beware of using stuff off the net for research purposes. There is far less quality control of material published there than you get from edited works like books and academic journals. Use with caution!