I had wondered why the text of Liberty's Refuge was available online, but that makes sense!
When I write a journal article, I expect that it will be more or less freely available online to anyone wishing to read the article (subject to a few exceptions, of course). Part of the reason for this is that my article is only going to be useful insofar as other people read it, cite it, and build off of it. In a way, why should a book written for the same purpose be any different? As long as its intended audience is other scholars, it's really just a longer version of a journal article (though I've seen journal articles that are longer than some books!), so it ought to be just as accessible to other scholars.
That sort of turns the question around. Why *wouldn't* you publish a book under an open-source model?
I do think the established academic presses signal a kind of credibility that purely open-source publishing can't yet do. And I personally still like the actual artifact of a book that I can hold and mark up.
Copyright law, patent law--are there others in that same domain?--so essential for the creators of intellectual property. Yet at the same time, as is true of so much in our social arrangements, really dependent on trust and good faith. In the absence of good faith and trust, it's alarming to see "the games people play." I wonder how much of what would otherwise be creative energy gets drained in defending against the trolls, the bad faith members of society.
I had wondered why the text of Liberty's Refuge was available online, but that makes sense!
When I write a journal article, I expect that it will be more or less freely available online to anyone wishing to read the article (subject to a few exceptions, of course). Part of the reason for this is that my article is only going to be useful insofar as other people read it, cite it, and build off of it. In a way, why should a book written for the same purpose be any different? As long as its intended audience is other scholars, it's really just a longer version of a journal article (though I've seen journal articles that are longer than some books!), so it ought to be just as accessible to other scholars.
That sort of turns the question around. Why *wouldn't* you publish a book under an open-source model?
I do think the established academic presses signal a kind of credibility that purely open-source publishing can't yet do. And I personally still like the actual artifact of a book that I can hold and mark up.
Copyright law, patent law--are there others in that same domain?--so essential for the creators of intellectual property. Yet at the same time, as is true of so much in our social arrangements, really dependent on trust and good faith. In the absence of good faith and trust, it's alarming to see "the games people play." I wonder how much of what would otherwise be creative energy gets drained in defending against the trolls, the bad faith members of society.