Textbook Revolution: O'Reilly's Open Book Project

O'Reilly's Open Book Project

Filed under: [ free culture, french, german, polish, programming, tech ]

http://oreilly.com/openbook/

O’Reilly is head and shoulders above the rest of the publishing industry. Not only do they have the amazing SafariU program, which I hope to emulate or join someday here at TBR, but they work with Creative Commons, don’t tie up their out-of-print books in copyright limbo forever, and are generally good people. If they would get into the non-computer textbook biz, the world would be a better place and I would no longer need to maintain this site. The Open Book Project is no exception to their general awesomeness.

So here is a page full of top-quality free computer books from O’Reilly, the most respected name in their niche. Some are out of print, others I’m not sure about. There are books in English, German, French, and even Polish. Enjoy!

From the site: “Over the years, O’Reilly Media has published a number of “Open Books”—books with various forms of “open” copyright. The reasons for “opening” copyright, as well as the specific license agreements under which they are opened, are as varied as our authors.

Perhaps a book was outdated enough to be put out of print, yet some people still had an urgent need for the information it covered. Perhaps the author or subject of the book felt strongly that books should be published under a particular open copyright. Or maybe the book was written collectively by a particular community, as in the case of our Community Press books.

O’Reilly holds the copyright to some of its books; individual authors hold the copyright to others. Regardless of who holds the copyright, the decision to apply an open copyright, and the choice of license, is left to the author or authors of the work. Some of the licenses include the GNU Free Documentation License, the Open Publication License, and the GNU General Public License. The content of these “Open Books” is posted here.

In addition to the books (with their various open licenses) listed here, O’Reilly has adopted the Creative Commons Founders’ Copyright, which we’ll apply to hundreds of out-of-print and current titles, pending author approval.”

Link to website

Available for purchase? varies by book