For university students, textbooks have been both a saviour and a bane. Having most of the essential readings in a single volume enables students to access resources easily. Despite...
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Category: Creative Commons, Open Source
Study Finds Open Source Textbooks as Effective as Commercial
A recent study has found that college students who used open educational resources (OER) in their undergraduate courses performed as well or better than those assigned commercial textbooks, even though...
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BQ Cervantes Open Source eReader is Back in Stock
When I introduced you to the Cervantes ereader from the Spanish device maker bq a couple months ago, my joy at finding an ereader that runs open source software was...
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LibreOffice 5.0 Now Available
Libre Office is an open-source office suite available on many platforms (even Android) and capable of editing word files, presentations, spreadsheets, etc. Libre Office has been maintained by The Document...
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Is the Booq Cervantes the First Open-Source eReader ?
A reader has tipped me to the news that Booq, the Spanish ereader importer, is now promoting one of its ereaders as an open-source device. Booq has been selling...
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Creative Commons is Out to Kill the Stock Photos Used on eBook Covers, and They Want Your Help
Here's one of those brilliant ideas that someone should have come up with years ago. For the past six months Creative Commons has been hard at work on a mobile app called...
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Flickr Adds Public Domain, CC-Zero License
Flickr announced on Monday that it was adding CC-Zero and Public Domain licensing options. Users who want to share their images freely with the public now have the option to release...
Continue readingReadium, NYPL to Host eBook Hackathon Next Month
Should you find yourself in Manhattan on the second Wednesday of January, you might want to stop by the New York Public Library - and not just for the books....
Continue readingFlickr Pulls CC-Licensed Images From Its Wall Art Program Following Outcry
Apologizing to their users, yesterday Flickr killed the controversial (but entirely legal) program which let you buy wall art printed with any appropriately licensed creative commons image from the service. Flickr...
Continue readingWhere Yahoo went wrong when they decided to sell prints of CC-Licensed Flickr images
WSJ reported last week that Yahoo's latest move to increase its revenues was pissing off Flickr users: More than 300 million publicly shared Flickr images use Creative Commons licenses, making...
Continue readingOpenStax to Release 10 New Open Source Textbooks by 2017
Rice University's open source textbook initiative is looking to save college students even more money on textbooks. OpenStax has announced plans to expand their catalog of CC-licensed textbooks by an...
Continue readingUnglue.it Finishes Ungluing Its First Book
It’s not exactly a secret that I’ve been somewhat skeptical of Unglue.it’s selections and model for soliciting crowdfunding to unlock various e-book titles into free Creative Commons release. Most...
Continue readingAmazon Unglues Unglue.it From Its Payment Processing Services
This morning as I was getting ready for work, a letter popped into my email from Eric Hellman at Unglue.it, the crowdfunding site operating on a Storytellers-Bowl-style model in...
Continue readingAustria adopted Creative Commons License as default
The city governments for Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, and Graz made a joint announcement this past week that they, along with the Chancellor's office (the executive branch of the Austrian...
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