[OSGeo-Edu] Getting Started on the Free GIS Book...

[Landon Blake]

I didn't notice those other e-mails before I responded. Sorry about
that.

It sounds like any restrictions on use, commercial or otherwise, may not
be a good idea. I don't have a problem with that, but I sure would like
to know with some clarity what license the material in the book will be
released under. I don't have any problem with the OSGeo holding the
copyright.

It also sounds like the "printable" version of the book might not be a
good idea right now, as the OSGeo may have some "style" and "branding"
issues to work out. Perhaps if I can get a chapter of the book completed
we can "nudge" these people to get the style issues worked out so that
we can publish a PDF or printable version of the chapter.

It also sounds like my initial idea about the chapter on "math for maps"
might be a good idea after all. I will stick with this topic.

In the meantime, I think it would be great if this group could decide
on:

[1] A target audience.
[2] The purpose and goal for the book.
[3] A way to track who is writing what.

I think number 3 will be important so that readers of the book can
understand the possible bias in the written material. After all, I'm a
land surveyor by trade, not really a GIS professional, and much of my
written material will be shaded from the land surveying perspective. I
also work with GIS mostly from the programming end of things, which will
also influence my perspective. I think it would be good to have a short
bio explaining these things for each author, and indicating which
portions of the book the author contributed to. I can set this up on the
wiki if needed.

I can come up with some suggestions and ideas for [1] and [2] if needed.

Landon

-----Original Message-----
From: Landon Blake [mailto:lblake at ksninc.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 1:25 PM
To: discuss at edu.osgeo.org
Subject: RE: [OSGeo-Edu] Getting Started on the Free GIS Book...

Jo and Tyler,

Thank you both for your responses.

I don't really have a problem using a creative commons license that
allows commercial use. I just thought some authors might have a problem
if others printed material they worked on a made a profit. But this
isn't a sticking point for me, and other valid commercial uses were
mentioned.

Before I can proceed I'd really need to know the following:

[1] What license my work will be made available under.
[2] What commercial uses will and won't be allowed. (Will we allow all
commercial uses?)

Who can I "nudge" to get a decision on this? Am I talking to the right
people? :]

I don't mind taking charge of the ball on this initially, as long as I'm
not peeing in someone else's bowl of cheerios. :] If someone else is in
charge, I just need some direction so I can get started. 

I suppose I could get started on one of my own wiki's, but I'd rather
not do that if I can get these other things squared away so I can start
my work through the OSGeo.

I was also thinking about maintaining a PDF version of my chapters using
Scribus and OpenOffice. Are there any thoughts on that? I think a
version of the book suitable for printing would be a good thing.

It's good to "hear" some voices on this mailing list.

Landon

-----Original Message-----
From: Jo Walsh [mailto:jo at frot.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 10:02 AM
To: discuss at edu.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Edu] Getting Started on the Free GIS Book...

dear Tyler, Landon, all
On Tue, Dec 19, 2006 at 09:46:07AM -0800, Tyler Mitchell wrote:
> >[3] What license will we use to release the material of book? I was  
> >thinking about the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share  
> >Alike 2.5 License. You can find details about the license here:  
> >http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/25/
> I'd have to dig up the archives to see if we agreed on something  
> around this.  We talked a fair bit about Charlie's own curriculum and

> how/why it could be licensed certain ways.  From my angle, one thing  
> to keep in mind is that any 'non-commercial' clause can actually kill

> some good use of the material. 

NC doesn't rule out commercial use of the material though, just *under
the terms of this license*. You could still have a "dual licensing" 
type model like MySQL's:
http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/faq.html

Having said this, if this were a democracy I would be in favour of
removing a commercial reuse restriction. If a publishing company wants
to print a tree edition of this text - isn't that a success? Would a
print-on-demand edition through an outfit like lulu.com be an option
for OSGeo to print this and make a small profit for the Foundation?

http://blog.okfn.org/2006/04/24/removing-the-nc/ is a writeup by Rufus
Pollock of the Open Knowledge Foundation about the problems NC clauses
can cause. FWIW OpenStreetmap has no NC clause for its data. It *is*
ShareAlike though and that can be a good option - if commercial
publishers make improvements they have to be released under the same
license terms... 

> For example, I worked with one or two  
> others a couple years ago to produce a data access manual for  
> MapServer, for a workshop we were running.  I included this as an  
> appendix in my Web Mapping Illustrated book, because it was a very  
> good reference for the audience in the book.  Re-writing material  
> that I'd already contributed to didn't make sense and the other  
> authors had no problems with it.  Was that commercial use?

Yes, "it's commercial when money changes hands".

cheers,


jo

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