Re: Offer to upload a book, subject to conditions

Hi Simetrical,

I fear there may be a snag in that second condition. As Robert pointed
out, Wikisource might be a better place for this, but I believe they
only host published works which, since your friend is considering a
free license, this book isn't.

On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 09:07:44PM -0500, Simetrical wrote:
> 2) That no one other than her change it (presumably other than
> wikilinking, breaking it into subpages, modifying navigational
> headers, that sort of thing).
> 
> Now, obviously both points are largely against wiki principles, but my
> impression is that the basic goal of Wikibooks is to publish quality
> textbooks, and that wiki is just a means to an end here.  Would
> Wikibooks be willing to accept these terms?

Yes, Wikibooks is an open forum for the collaboration to write quality
educational material for public use. The problem is that the framework
of the wiki as a tool for collaboration allows easy modification of
any page to create a derived work which then becomes the new current
version of that page at Wikibooks.

Basically, I see no way, under as free a license as your friend wants
to use (and Wikibooks requires) to ensure that the current version
contents of the book are mostly her original work.

In my view, the best way for her to realise her objective, is to
simply host the book herself somewhere on the web. That will ensure
that she has editorial control of that copy at that location (though
others may choose to modify it elsewhere -- e.g. on Wikibooks).

Sincerely,
Martin Swift

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