On 11 Dec 2006, at 19:35, Kirsten Chevalier wrote:

On 12/11/06, Andrew Wagner wrote:

...

Well, perhaps if nothing else, we could use a wikibook to collaboratively work on the structure of such a book, and then from that you could publish a "real" book. I don't really know the legal issues, though. I am thinking of several books though which have been written and released both as full paper books, and as free digital books. Could we do something similar?

I definitely think using a wiki to work on the book would be a good idea. I just wouldn't want to imply that that meant it would necessarily be a public wiki or that it would be around forever. The legal issues are basically that publishers don't want to publish books that people can get for free off the web (whether or not you agree with this logic). There are exceptions to this, like Lessig's _Free Culture_, but it's my impression that they usually involve authors who have enough sway that publishers will let them get away with whatever they want.

Well, I know that e.g., Cory Doctorrow puts his books online for free, and he seems to have no trouble also getting printed versions sold (see for example http://craphound.com/someone/). So I guess it should be possible to do. Especially because the demand will be quite large, IMO. A collection of real-world examples a la dive into python would certainly be on the top of my to buy list. -- Andy