[Foundation-l] Bertelsmann publishes "Wikipedia Encyclopedia in One Volume"

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 9:06 AM, Mary Murrell <mary_murrell at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'd like to see a book publishing contract that is committed to GFDL. Does anyone have one they could share?

"How Wikipedia Works," a book about using and contributing to the
English Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects by myself
(en:user:phoebe), Charles Matthews (en:user:Charles Matthews) and Ben
Yates (en:user:Tlogmer) is due to be published this spring/early
summer by No Starch Press under the GFDL. More details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phoebe/book

[[No Starch]] is a small technical press based in San Francisco; they
have typically published books about Linux and other open source
software. Their books are distributed by O'Reilly, so you'll see them
in lots of shops, and they are typically very high quality. We had
some negotiation about what license to use; and agreed that for a book
about Wikipedia, maintaining GFDL-compatibility would be important.
(Unfortunately, CC license compatibility still seems a bit far off for
this project).

It's a risk for the publisher to take -- they are putting in lots of
editing time on our manuscript, and obviously the license means others
could reprint that text. Nonetheless, they are enthusiastic about
supporting open content and free culture, and (regardless of how our
book turns out) they should be commended for that.

In the meantime, I am struggling with the details of adhering to the
letter of the GFDL -- because there is little precedent we are having
to work things out as we go. Someday, I would love to see a "dummy's
guide to publishing under a free content license" -- half of the
problem of using many licenses, even CC, is they're hard to figure out
for the average person.

best,
Phoebe Ayers