Thursday, August 04, 2005
Boing-boing citing lessig's blog:
After Wikipedia: free, collaborative, open kindergarten-uni textbooks
Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikipedia, on what's next:
The second thing that will be free is a complete curriculum (in all languages) from Kindergarten through the University level. There are several projects underway to make this a reality, including our own Wikibooks project, but of course this is a much bigger job than the encyclopedia, and it will take much longer.
In the long run, it will be very difficult for proprietary textbook publishers to compete with freely licensed alternatives. An open project with dozens of professors adapting and refining a textbook on a particular subject will be a very difficult thing for a proprietary publisher to compete with. The point is: there are a huge number of people who are qualified to write these books, and the tools are being created to leave them to do that.
The bad news: it's just vaporware atm. They are talking "by 2040" which basicly means never. I'm pretty much conviced, though, that this will happen soon.
After Wikipedia: free, collaborative, open kindergarten-uni textbooks
Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikipedia, on what's next:
The second thing that will be free is a complete curriculum (in all languages) from Kindergarten through the University level. There are several projects underway to make this a reality, including our own Wikibooks project, but of course this is a much bigger job than the encyclopedia, and it will take much longer.
In the long run, it will be very difficult for proprietary textbook publishers to compete with freely licensed alternatives. An open project with dozens of professors adapting and refining a textbook on a particular subject will be a very difficult thing for a proprietary publisher to compete with. The point is: there are a huge number of people who are qualified to write these books, and the tools are being created to leave them to do that.
The bad news: it's just vaporware atm. They are talking "by 2040" which basicly means never. I'm pretty much conviced, though, that this will happen soon.
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