Hoi,
I think we should not support Apple in breaking the standard and in
preventing us from using our work anywhere else. We take pride in being
freely licensed and there is no excuse for the walled garden approach taken
by Apple. There is also no excuse for us endorsing this behaviour.
Obviously as what we do is freely licensed or public domain you can do
whatever as long as the license requirements are maintained. I am sure that
as a consequence you cannot legally publish in Apple's walled garden. I
hate to see anything done in this area that is endorsed by the Wikimedia
Foundation.
Thanks,
Gerard
On 20 January 2012 10:46, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
(This mail is focused on books, but the topic is of
more general
interest IMHO, thus foundation-l)
Hi all,
I just saw the "iBooks Author" news:
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/19/a-closer-look-at-ibooks-author-textbook…
Of course, all these pretty books will be only available in the Apple
paywalled garden.
So I thought: As they use basically HTML5 (plus a few proprietary
libraries), could we produce such interactive, tablet/phone-enabled
e-books ("wBooks" as in "Wikimedia":-) from free content? I believe
the answer is yes, though it might be quite a push technologically
(just to be clear, I am speaking of the books here, not of the
authoring software).
Also: Should we? I believe the answer is yes as well, for two reasons.
One, Apples work here might (yet again) set a new standard, which
means everything falling short of that standard will be neglected by
the target audience, which runs counter to our declared goal of
disseminating free knowledge; standing still might well mean falling
behind. Another reason is the opportunity that Apple creates for us
here: Once such e-books become accepted as general teaching tools in
schools, it will be much easier to switch from Apple-only, costly
books to run-everywhere, free books; they might just win the
"technology battle" for us.
What do you think?
Cheers,
Magnus
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