Advocating FDL University-courses

[Simo Sorce]

On Tue, 2002-07-16 at 11:42, Jaime E . Villate wrote:
> As the editor of our university's press, I'm also trying to convince my
> colleagues to release their books with free licenses. I recommend that they
> release them in any editable format they have it (even the abominable Word
> format) and once they are free documents we at the university press will
> translate them into a more standard and convenient format (LaTeX is our current
> option). I've seen also groups of students working in translating their
> professor's notes into LaTeX.

Then use openOffice to translate their .doc files in .sxw files.

openOffice uses a transparent format because the .sxw file is simply a
set of XML files (with DTD) zipped.
You only need to unzip and edit (with a simple text editor) the files if
you want to.

> The major problem I see preventing professors from releasing their books with
> free documentation licenses is that the academic establishment do not value
> non-traditional publications. If a famous editorial company publishes your
> book, your colleagues give you a lot of credit for it. If you distribute it
> yourself on the Internet they don't take it seriously. The problem is that
> most major editors will not publish books with a free license; the authors
> will have to put some pressure on them. For authors it has a lot of
> advantages to publish under a free documentation license: they are again free
> to update and use their own books, which with the current copyright transfer
> contracts is something they cannot do (I know it from my own experience :-)

Authors (of music and text) should take back their freedom, it would be
really nice to see similar things as FSF(E) for music and texts.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce - simo.sorce at xsec.it
Xsec s.r.l.
via Durando 10 Ed. G - 20158 - Milano
tel. +39 02 2399 7130 - fax: +39 02 700 442 399
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