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

[Arnulf Christl]

On Tue, December 19, 2006 22:35, Landon Blake wrote:
> 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.

Hi, welcome.

If you start in the OSGeo Wiki the license of your document will be
"Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License" as specified in the Wiki
before you hit the Save button. I am not sure whether it would make sense
to add additional license texts on eacht page. Just start editing and
everything will be fine. I am not fully sure on the copyright ownership
but guess that it will be OSGeo.

> 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.

Just go ahead, if you need something from VisCom just aks for it. In the
meantime VisCom will work this out so that in future a single link
suffices (dream on).

> 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.

Yes, good. It will be good to have some math in the Wiki, and the
practical examples can link to the [[Axis Order Confusion]] page to
confuse people after educating them. :-)

> In the meantime, I think it would be great if this group could decide
> on:
>
> [1] A target audience.

Neogeographer about to start with web map hacking. This might be a hard
target for a surveyor. So again, do it as best you can and maybe add a
section what you believe is a requirement. Those links will later join the
different chapters together to result in a comprehensive tutorial and
technical reference (linking directly into code...).

> [2] The purpose and goal for the book.

Ahm ...a comprehensive tutorial and technical reference for FOSSGIS software.

> [3] A way to track who is writing what.

The Wiki has full history and keeps track of all and every change. There
are a few people who check what is going on all the time so that a certain
quality can be maintained. For some reason this Wiki is very friendly. As
far as I know there has not been much highly controversial discussion.
Yet. You never know when that starts but be assured that some people will
notice.

> 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.

You could simply use the built in user account system of the Wiki.
Everybody needs an account to edit things and therefore everybody who has
an account has also a user page. This is the place to put some bio
information, if you want. You do not have to, its all up to you.

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

I will upload a very practical Tutorial (with screenshots of the involved
software dialogs) on how to install/build a SOA on a Windows(c) (outch)
system. It came into existance during a course which is documented here:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Resultados_del_Tutorial_ISSTOCAM_WebGIS

But it is in Spanish... :-)

So there is lots to do and you should just do what you like most because
chances then are high that it will be good and it will get done.

I also have a few questions. How do we organize the pages so that
evenatually they will result in a "book". I have heard of an extension
"wikibooks" which sounds like what we need. Until we have found out how to
use that we might just add a [[Category:Free GIS Book]] to each page
giving us an index:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Category:Free_GIS_Book

Best regards,
Arnulf.

> -----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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-- 
Arnulf Christl
http://www.ccgis.de