Interesting. Wonder how long it will be before the
Text and Academic Authors start complaining.
From a personal point of view, I think it is a good idea to have
open source freely available textbooks. I don't think a conventional "open source" model (as in Wikipedia) is necessarily appropriate. When it comes to textbooks, it's important that there be an overall editor who is an expert in the field. ("A person who is recognized as an expert authority often has greater experience and knowledge of their field than the average person, so their opinion is more likely than average to be correct." --
Wikipedia) Particularly in science subjects. If California were to adopt a truly "open source" model, with no expertise requirements for contributors, you'd likely have fights going between people who want to espouse one point of view and people who hold another. I'm more in favor of a Creative Commons license to textbooks that are prepared by acknowledged experts. The challenge is to motivate such experts to contribute to a Creative Commons textbook without expecting compensation. (Or maybe funding such development.)
By the way, MIT started an open courseware project several years ago. Their goal is to have the instructional materials -- syllabi, lecture notes, presentation charts, assignments, exams, etc. -- available online to be used by instructors at other universities and colleges. Home page for the project is at
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
Browsing through the course catalog, I was attracted to a literature course "Medieval Literature: Medieval Women Writers".
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Literature...Home/index.htm