31–40 of 57 posts
Hmm, any technical reason for providing only PDF and no epub format?
With epub format the page # will vary depending on font size.
There's probably other reasons as well, but that's one that I've heard mentioned.
> OpenStax at Rice University is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity Good to see that OpenStax is a 501(c)(3) charity, which is the nonprofit classification where donations are tax-deductible and thus restricted. That makes it harder for the organization to be influenced too directly by sponsors, since donations cannot be used for purposes which would yield direct marketplace advantage. I also see that they use a permissiv…
I disagree. I would very much prefer a "GPL type" share-alike licence. The basic principle is: I'm releasing this content to the public, with the expectation that anyone that builds upon it will also do the same. Otherwise people can take what I did, use it for their profit, and not contribute back, hurting the overall community. This doesn't seem fair to me.
That even applies to books: I've gotten a good number of inquiries from college bookstores asking if instructors can sell copies. They are worried that money is changing hands, when students buy a physical copy, and I am not getting any of it. I am glad those folks are looking out for my rights, but my point here is that "you can't sell it" is a more complex restriction than at least I (in no way a lawyer) thought when I first started doing this.
I teach mathematics at a community college and use free materials in my courses or use materials that I’ve created. I never use paid materials in my courses. The reason I can do this is because math doesn’t change from year to year. I’m in a subject whose content is static. Even so most open textbooks are quite bad. I’ve only found a few that were really good. Writing a good book even in a field whose content doesn’t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. I would very much prefer a "GPL type" share-alike licence. The basic principle is: I'm releasing this content to the public, with the expectation that anyone that builds upon it will also do the same. Otherwise people can take what I did, use it for their profit, and not contribute back, hurting the overall community. This doesn't seem fair to me.
Long ago, in the LaTeX world, people first licensed stuff as "not for sale" (or even "not for sale to the military"). Then someone wanted to publish a "How to Use LaTeX" book, commercially but basically at cost, with a CD in the back having a complete collection of software. They were faced with being unable to do so because some of the software was licensed as not-for-sale. That seems counter productive, to me. That…
Hmm, any technical reason for providing only PDF and no epub format?
From their support site. "Do you have .epub versions of your books? We no longer support .epub versions of our OpenStax books. Only a small percentage (around 1 percent) of OpenStax readers reported using the .epub format, and maintaing these versions is costly; instead, we focus on providing our online web view, PDF, iBooks, Amazon, and print versions. You can see what formats are available for your subject at OpenS…
I call bullshit. EPUB is basically a self-contained web site with a built-in index. If the text is maintained as an EPUB to begin with, producing a PDF is functionally identical to rendering it on an EPUB reader with a fixed page size and font.
They provide an online web view. The margin of difference between that and EPUB is building the metadata file and ZIPping it all into a single file. Or it's just an online PDF reader. Besides that, iBooks is based on EPUB, and older Kindle files are based on MobiPocket, which is based on OEBPS, the precursor of EPUB. Amazon has gratis software to convert from EPUB to Kindle file format. The print versions are probably functionally identical to PDF, with printing and cutting margins added to the page size.
If they maintained the book source in EPUB, all other formats that they do provide are essentially free, and can be maintained with a conversion program, a shell script, and cron job.
The real reason is that a lot of the available EPUB readers do not render web pages consistently, and they don't want to test Adobe Digital Editions, Calibre, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Long ago, in the LaTeX world, people first licensed stuff as "not for sale" (or even "not for sale to the military"). Then someone wanted to publish a "How to Use LaTeX" book, commercially but basically at cost, with a CD in the back having a complete collection of software. They were faced with being unable to do so because some of the software was licensed as not-for-sale. That seems counter productive, to me. That…
The CC "share-alike" option and the CC "non-commercial" option are orthogonal for exactly this reason.
Consider what it takes to rectify license violation (either inadvertent or deliberate). Officially, the full force of copyright law can be brought down, but historically neither tradition wants that -- they just want to bring violators into compliance for future distribution. For share-alike, derivative works must be released under the share-alike license, which can affect business strategy. For attribution-based, adding a few lines of notification suffices.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I couldn’t agree more. Perhaps we need a curated list with endorsements from those who use it in their own teaching curriculums and another list of users who endorse it.
http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ is useful, I think.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Writing a good book even in a field whose content doesn’t change much is hard. There’s a need for publishers but just not a need for one that charges hundreds of dollars for a textbook. That's what Dover Books[1] and its series on Mathematics[2] are for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Publications [2] http://store.doverpublications.com/by-subject-mathematics.ht...
The OP is talking about teaching community college mathematics. That's not introductory university mathematics; if you are lucky it's Pythagoras' Theorem and quadratic equations. The purpose of community college is to provide the students with a degree certificate that they can use for another degree. My current institution's nursing school has a set text called "Calculate with Confidence", which teaches the kids to…
W. W. Sawyer's books, such as Mathematician's Delight[1] and Vision in Elementary Mathematics[2], seem to be exactly for this audience.
Good to see that they offer free slides for the instructor. Now what's missing for widespread adoption is the online autograding system because at teaching colleges instructors are totally overworked and could not keep up with the weekly assignments even if they wanted to. College textbooks are chosen for the online student assignments, which typically cost the students 50 USD or thereabouts.
Also, OpenStax currently has pretty widespread adoption: See http://news.rice.edu/2018/08/01/48-percent-of-colleges-2-2-m...
(Disclaimer: I currently work at OpenStax, but am not speaking on behalf of OpenStax)
(Disclaimer: I currently work at OpenStax, but am not speaking on behalf of OpenStax)