On a related tack, I've been toying with the idea of writing my NEXT book as an open source project from start to finish. We would begin by posting a chapter outline and letting anyone edit, contribute and annotate while we write. Do you think this would work? Would it be possible to publish the book commercially and get it into bookstores if the writing process took place within a GNU framework? Would the GNU license be necessary to attract collaborators?

Wow! That'd be really keen. With you and whoever else as editors and/or primary authors, you'd obviously have veto power over what changes get included, what changes get reversed, etc. If you managed to draw enough people to the project, I can't even begin to imagine the possible quality of the end result. When I'm reading books, I seem to find /all/ the typos, misspellings, and punctuation errors. I guess most books don't get very meticulous proofreadings (I have to read and digest every single word fairly slowly when I read, so my reading of a book does equal an insanely meticulous proofreading). Plus, I imagine such a project would likely attract fairly intelligent individuals. Having a number of acute minds contribute to the text would likely bring to the project more depth and scope, with people suggesting nuances, perspectives, and angles that the authors probably wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

I'd certainly be interested in meaningfully contributing. And if you managed to advertise the project in the right channels, imagine the people that might drop by to throw in their two cents: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ralph Nader, Jello Biafra, Greg Palast, Naomi Klein, Michael Parenti, RMS, countless anti-globalization kiddies (I use 'kiddie' in a good sense here, as I'm one of 'em), old peaceniks, numerous academics from around the world, etc. I don't see how you could go wrong.

So long as a history of all changes is kept, and so long as the authors/editors review all changes, I don't see how anything bad could come of the venture. (The part about authors/editors reviewing all changes shouldn't be too bad, as such a project certainly wouldn't have the volume of contributions as Wikipedia.)

And I don't think a GNU license would specifically be necessary. I, personally, would like to see a GNU license, 'cause I'm a big fan of RMS, and I've been a GNU kiddie since I was 15 or so. But there are plenty of good GPL-ish (or at least BSD-ish) licenses out there that people respect: Open Content License, Open Publishing License, Artistic License, or roll your own, etc.

Peace out,

Derek

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