http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...tbooks/263047/
CA governor just signed a law to fund creation of free, open source textbooks students can download for free or buy ($20 for printed books). The books will be released under creative commons license.
I was hoping private foundations would start something like this. There's a lot of private money being poured into education, eg the Gates Foundation. Why not pay profs/educators to create textbooks and give them away for free? I realize many of them make a mint from book royalty, but there will be others willing to do it for a flat fee or even donate their time.
This CA initiative has a good chance of producing something interesting, b/c CA actually has a very good public higher Ed system, between the UC schools and CSU schools and community colleges. If nothing else, it will spur the private groups to get in on the act.
About time the textbook industry gets disrupted.