Wikibooks talk:Publication of the Month

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[edit] Physical Publication of Wikibooks Content

User:Munchkinguy made a very bold move here on Wikibooks and offered Wikijunior Big Cats up for sale on Lulu Press. BTW, if you aren't familiar with this company, they do on-line print on demand publications for just about anything, and offer a number of services that can help with trying to quickly and easily publish any sort of written material. The prefered way of sending the content to this printing company is to give them a PDF (typical in the print industry). Once you have set up the content and answered a few questions about who the authors of the book are and answered some coypright questions, they offer a web link that can then be used to purchase the book on-line.

I want to make it perfectly clear here that what this user did was not only perfectly legal, but it is something that is encouraged and should be happening on a wider scale, not just for one lone Wikijunior book. It is exciting that Wikibooks content is finally getting to the stage that we are feeling bold and trying to move into the formal publication arena.

I had a few concerns about how this was being used on Wikibooks, primarily with the links from Wikibooks to Lulu Press that implied an "endorsement" of this particular printed edition of the Wikibook making it seem as an official publication. As a result, I posted this following e-mail to Foundation-l: http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-July/008164.html

I was actually surprised by the responses I got, including a huge misunderstanding of the GFDL and presumption that it meant it was a non-commercial use only license and some other issues that showed a lack of understanding of basic copyleft principles. The act that has really shocked me more than anything else is that Jimbo talked directly to Lulu Press after I made this move and requested this book be removed from their catalog because of trademark violations. This really does set up a chilling atmosphere of redistributing Wikimedia content in general and I wish there were some reasonable way to get this published without having to hire a team of lawyers and fight the WMF. Apparently some of the individuals on the mailing list want all references to the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia projects removed entirely, or at least have strongly suggested this.

I would like to note that w:Wikipedia: Verbatim copying has some guidelines on this issue that not only should the page name be preserved (i.e. the working "title" of the book on Wikibooks like Wikijunior Big Cats), but it is a legal requirement. Some advise on Foundation-l gave completely contrary advise. This sounds like a team of lawyers representing Wikibooks users is going to have to be organized on this ground alone.

There are other issue including even how to reference the Wikimedia Foundation and if the WMF has any copyright claim. Apparently Wikijunior Solar System/Copyright Notice has been in error as the WMF doesn't want to claim any copyright over any of the Wikimedia projects. Mind you, this is a very different stance than the Free Software Foundation takes on the GNU software project, where the FSF strongly encourages individual authors to assign copyright to the FSF specifically for the purposes of copyright enforcement. The route that the WMF is going instead is that individual contributors to Wikimedia projects must hire their own lawyers and enforce provisions of the GFDL on their own, if they care to even have it enforced. While this is legally safe for the WMF, it really means that anybody can do anything to Wikimedia project content and that the GFDL essentially is meaningless and in some ways might as well be in the public domain. Certainly any enforcement of the GFDL is going to be an uphill battle, and as long as the content doesn't use any WMF trademarks, the WMF isn't even going to be able to participate in such enforcement. Indeed WMF policies are seemingly designed specifically to obfuscate exactly who does own any Wikimedia project content and to hide any copyright claims by anybody... even if they want the GFDL enforced on their behalf.

I am not really sure where to proceed on these issues, but getting back to the main point, I want to see content physically published that is made from Wikibooks content. I also think it would be in the best interests of this project and enhance the experience to readers/visitors that simply want to get Wikibooks content, that they can order and obtain physical copies of these books that we have spent the last three years trying to write. We as a project need to come up with at least some policies for how and in what forms we would like to have links to the physical publications of Wikibooks. I would also like to propose organizing Wikibooks users to help move significant books like the Books of the Month or the "Hot Picks" on the front page to a publishable state that can be offered up for sale. The question then is how to proceed and in what form should this organization take place? --Rob Horning 13:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The printed material would, presumably, be sold. Questions about who profits from that sale are important questions. WMF cannot profit from it, because it is a non-profit organization. Likewise, the publication was not authorized by the WMF at all. Likewise, User:Munchkinguy cannot profit off the sale, because the material is not his to sell commercially. Lulu press can potentially make profit off the sale, although to the best of my knowledge, the GDFL restricts that sales of material covered by that licence be restricted to the price of the distribution medium itself. Also, publishing this material requires some manner of assurance that the material is, in fact, not in violation of any copyrights, and so far we are just going by the word of each individual contributor. If there are uncaught copyright violations in the material for the book, and they are discovered after the material has been printed, the WMF could find itself in a shitstorm of litigation that i doubt it has the financial resources to recover from. The goal is good, and in general I agree with the fact that wikibooks should produce printable materials. However, i don't think that we can produce physical volumes that require commercial sale. We should restrict our efforts to producing "Print Versions" or "PDF Versions" of our favorite books, and allow individual readers print it themselves. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects)
This can be refuted on multiple points. Anybody can make money off of this precisely because it is released under the GFDL. This is not a non-commercial license and to say that one particular use, notably User:Munchkinguy can't make money off of this is totally misunderstanding what the GFDL is about and what copyleft is about. You can sell a Wikibook for whatever you can get somebody to pay for it, as can I. The only thing that we don't have is an exclusive right to publication, which nobody is asserting here. Also, the WMF does not have to give permission to publish this content, and indeed they are prohibited under the GFDL from even being able to stop anybody from doing so. Again I'll say it, the GFDL does not restrict the sale of anything. It just restricts exclusive publication rights. And the reason we get so paranoid about copyright violations and making sure that all content on this project complies with the GFDL is precisely so we don't have to worry about any other copyright violation if we have to republish it somewhere else. You are "signing" a contract when you make contributions to Wikimedia projects certifying that the content complies with the GFDL when you hit the "Save Page" button. This is legally admissable, particularly if the disclaimer is there.
The whole issue here is strictly over the use of trademarks, and how this content can be reproduced. And yes, we can indeed produce physical volumes and sell them commercially. That we, as Wikibooks users, might have to go off and form another non-profit cooperative independent of the WMF may have to be an option, although it would be nice to work with and through the WMF if they are willing. Having to set up a totally different organization would in fact reduce the amount of money we would be able to bring into the WMF from the sales of this stuff, although we would be able to do some cool things like pay contributors to Wikibooks instead for the work they've done for writing some of the content.
The issue here really is should this be something that is done in cooperation with current (and perhaps former) Wikibooks users or would you mind if people outside of Wikibooks users make money off of this instead? This will happen, and it is precisely within the terms of the GFDL. The other aspect of all this is where and even if links to commercial publications should be on Wikibooks, even if the group selling the content is a formally registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization as well donating all of the profits to the WMF. Being a non-profit organization does not preclude you from selling merchandise in this manner. Just look at the WMF Cafe Press t-shirt shop.
If we put this together and get it successful early, we can have the profits get pushed into the WMF where most of us wouldn't mind the money being spent.... on servers and helping to grow the project. If instead we are hostle to this and wait for a group of lawyers who don't care about the WMF or Wikibooks get involved, none of the profits will go back into this project and instead will go to traditional textbook publisher's pockets instead. Which future do you want? --Rob Horning 16:36, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps Jimbo wants to protect the trademark? I can see things spiralling out of control should the trademark be reproduced without any "checks" of any kind. I can see "Wikibooks's Calculus" publishing vandalized matter a million times if some check doesn't goes in. Additionally; using trademark to prevent circulation of GPLed software isn't unheard of. IIRC, this is the technique that Red Hat uses.
Either way, I think Jimbo is being cautious about this. Maybe the trademark issue is the only issue he wants addressed? Well, time to ask Jimbo I guess... --Dragontamer 16:20, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, according to Rob Horning, the WMF would be able to commercially sell Wikibooks "as long as we can show a need for the money that is legitimate." The GFDL also doesn't have any commercial restrictions. Even those with no affiliation to the original project can sell GFDL books for a profit. By the way, the German Wikipedia community has started a WikiPress site. I can't read German, but it seems like they charge 10€ for printed collections of Wikipedia content and allow free PDF downloads. --hagindaz 16:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
That is just my understanding of the GDFL, I may very well be wrong on that point. I'm certainly not a lawyer. I would be whole-heartedly in favor of producing and selling wikibooks material, so long as we as a community don't land ourselves in legal hot water. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 19:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
A non-commercial only license would require you to pay only for the physical medium but make no money off of the content. That is not the GFDL or even the GPL (which can also make money off of through the direct sales of software with that license). The point about the GFDL and similar copyleft licenses is that you are free to do whatever you want with the content including being able to substantially modify the content without permission from the copyright holder. That is precisely why it is called copyleft and not copyright. Having this misunderstanding is common, and the fact is on a practical basis, there isn't that much of financial incentive to charge huge profits with copyleft material precisely because if you offer something like the Blender 3D book for $50 a copy and somebody else offers the same exact thing for $20, guess who is more likely to be able to see the book? Economic forces alone are going to keep the prices down low (as has happened with Linux distros), and furthermore you have to be able to give the recipient of the content the same ability to make additional copies, including going to a printer and giving copies to their friends. BTW, my goal is to get a small set of Wikibooks that I can then take to a local flea market and to be able to sell, even if all I do is break even and cover the booth space with the "profit". At least it will give some publicity to the project and get the content into more hands. --Rob Horning 21:06, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
This is all quite disturbing... I was under the impression that the whole point of WB was to eventually have texts that could be used in teaching and instruction. Robert, are you able to provide a bit more details on why Jimbo objects so strongly to this idea?
The press on the German wiki probably has english speaking editors involved with their project... I'll try to use some of my rusty German to request some advice.Johnny 10:21, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
(Done, here. If someone a bit more fluent could try that out, please lend a hand. BTW: you can't edit there without an account!) Johnny 10:44, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Just to say that I totally agree with you: the publication of hard-printed content from wikibooks is a definitely an objective that I support, and the GFDL allows anyone to sell the work available on this site. We have still to tackle the issue of the wikimedia trademarks. I think the release (pdf of printed) of books supported by the community/fundation (equivalent to the major version release of a software or of the wikipedia 1.0 project) would give credibility to the outstanding work available here. Many people do not trust information available from wikimedia projects because it is unstable. A "major" (printed) version of books (with links to the corresponding online version and revision number) would be a good response to this issue. CyrilB 10:40, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the only "advise" that seems to be coming from the WMF is that you can't use any WMF trademarks in any circumstance and any context. That would even be merely a link to Wikibooks itself or any other Wikimedia project. Or to put it bluntly, we need to try and do something and see if the WMF is going to sue us or take down the content like Jimbo did with the Wikijunior Big Cats book. There really is no need to get into a legal fight here, as we are (I hope) civilized adults and all I'm asking is for the WMF to define what they think is acceptable use of their trademarks.
I think the real problem here is that money is changing hands without "approval" of the WMF, and this was percieved to be a potential future revenue source. I also have a very hard time believing that this is the very first time that the use of Wikimedia logos and "trademarks" were seriously discussed in this context. Certainly the publication of this book is a watershed event because it is forcing these issues into the open. BTW, the German Wikipress group (link above) does use the "trademark" name of Wikipedia for some of their content, and I really fail to see why Wikipedia would be legitimate use but Wikijunior Big Cats is not. Indeed Brad noted that the name Wikijunior wasn't even registered as a trademark, nor is its use in Wikibooks or anywhere else indicated with a trademark indicia or any other indication that it might be a trademark of the WMF. All I can say is that this is going to get real interesting and might get ugly before it gets sorted out.
I'm going to have to take at face value what Jimbo and Brad said, that they don't want to kill such inititives nor do they want to stop people from doing this sort of activity. --Rob Horning 21:11, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Alright. Here's the deal: The steps that Jimmy Wales took were precautionary measures to make sure I wasn't doing anything illegal. Just a few points I want to make:

  1. I am not making a profit off the printing of this book. The $11.13 pays for printing; the PDF download is free of charge.
  2. When I explained this to Jimmy Whales in an email, he responded "No problem, it would be fine to make a profit actually."
  3. After talking to Bradford A. Patrick, Esq. (General Counsel for Wikimedia), I learned that the problems with the publication arose from attributing the publication to the WMF instead of the individual authors. He mentioned no objection to putting the Lulu link on Wikibooks. In his words: "The only concern I have ...is how and to what extent the marketing of the book will mention our trademarks or logo." (Quote shortened for clarity.
  4. I would mention that many Wikipedia pages point to maps on Google Earth, although it obviously does not endorse Google in any way.

--Munchkinguy 03:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Rob, about the Wikijunior trademark, this what Brad Patrick had to say: "I would note that to avoid any further future concerns, I have applied for registration of the Wikijunior mark, so there is no question of what ownership interest Wikimedia Foundation Inc. has in any of the projects or individual works." --Munchkinguy 03:09, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Solutions?

What steps are available to remedy the situation? Is there a proper forum where we could discuss this with WM's trustees? Would simply removing the WM copyrighted materials (such as the WB logo, etc.) help alleviate the problem? Would a straw poll here help at all? Is there a transcript somewhere of what happened that could be put on wikinews or other outlets? SB_Johnny 09:58, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

As far as a remedy to this, I don't know how else to deal with this other than Foundation-l and trying to get some feedback from various WMF board members. Jimbo, Angela, and Danny have all put in some kind of feedback, although Anthere has been surprisingly quiet. That is just about the whole board. Brad (the WMF executive director and chief legal counsel) is certainly aware of the situation as well. So in terms of a forum to express that there is a problem here, that has been done.
In terms of using WMF copyrighted materials, none were used at all, unless you count the "front page" of Wikijunior Big Cats as being copyrighted by the WMF. The copyright attribution for that page claims it is dual licensed under GFDL and CC-by-SA.... hardly something that the WMF can complain about when somebody decides to redistribute the content. The big problem was that it was listed as "copyright Wikimedia Foundation, Inc." and the user who published this listed the Wikimedia Foundation as an "author". I think that was legitimate so far as trademark usage, although apparently the WMF doesn't want to have copyright attribution. I think that is a misguided notion, but it is not my call. The other issue is the use of the term "Wikijunior", which the WMF can also clear up very quickly if they say what they think are legitimate uses are what are inappropriate. Right now the feeling seems to be that under no circumstance can any WMF trademark be used under any circumstance, even if it is in violation of the GFDL for publication naming standards and even if the trademark usage might even be legal. Get a lawyer and fight it in court if you think you are on the right side of the law.
As far as a transcript of what happened, all my interaction has been on Foundation-l, and is therefore something of a public record. I don't think having a straw poll would help other than perhaps a show of support for having printed materials in the first place. Even then, this isn't something that can be decided by a popularity contest. Either you can publish printed copies of Wikimedia project content or you can't, and a very good explaination why or why not. I thought this is exactly why it is available under the GFDL.
BTW, I completely hate this attitude and I think it is going to have some long-term negative consequences between the WMF and the contributors to the various WMF projects. If we want to pour a load of gasoline on this whole thing and get it into a holy flame war, I'm sure we could get Richard Stallman involved here. To even mention that the WMF is prohibiting redistribution of GFDL content and pulling publications, and demanding royalties for publication, that is going to get in his craw in a way that you would only begin to believe. This is totally contrary to the principles behind the GFDL and copyleft. Hardcore copyleft proponents would have a field day over this issue.
Please, I would beg of everybody here on Wikibooks, don't blow this issue up yet by sending a note to slashdot or involve too many people outside of the WMF. I think that would actually cause more damage than it is worth, even though I'm sure there are some people outside of Wikimedia projects that would be interested in this issue. At least as long as the WMF board is trying to deal with this issue and if Jimbo is correct that the Wikijunior Big Cats book will be restored as soon as the WMF board decides how to deal with this, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. I don't, however, want to be arguing about this six months from now and patience will wear thin very rapidly here. --Rob Horning 12:24, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Does the copyright actually belong to WMF, or does it belong to FSF? I thought FSF was holding the copyrights for anyone using the GDFL... am I mistaken about that? SB_Johnny 15:11, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
You are wrong. The FSF holds only copyrights which are explicitly granted to it. The WMF has trademark and copyright interests in certain names and logos. The WMF does NOT control the copyright to the content on WMF projects. Rather, each individual contributor owns the copyright, but licenses them under the GFDL, which allows WMF and others to republish them under the terms of the GFDL. Kellen T 15:26, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
The FSF asks for copyrights from GNU projects specifically so they can enforce the GPL. Otherwise they have no claim in court. What is bizzare right now is that although the WMF denies that they own the copyright over Wikimedia projects, they certainly act in some ways as if they own copyright rather than are simply a common carrier or service provider. Official actions including the actions of Jimbo here on Wikibooks to change policy and remove content are something that would be legally justified if the WMF owned the content. Very different rules apply if the WMF wants to claim that they are merely the "carrier" of the content and this is merely a public forum.
I do predict that when the day comes that there is a very serious challenge to the GFDL involving Wikimedia project content, many Wikimedia users are going to be shocked to discover that the WMF doesn't have copyright on the content and that individual Wikimedia users are going to be "thrown to the wolves" and have to get lawyers of their own just to survive financially and legally. What issue is going to make this necessary I can't predict, although who would have thought about IBM vs. SCO and that challenge to the GPL? --Rob Horning 13:06, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jimbo's first words on this

Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> There is a control issue here that does need to be resolved, and that 
> would be how much control does the WMF want to have directly over this 
> kind of activity as well?  That would also involve the use of Wikimedia 
> trademarks (aka Wikijunior) and logos.

I have no particular stance on the overall issues here, other than some
broad general principles that I think would be widely accepted by almost
everyone.

However, in the short term, since this came as a complete surprise
without any information given to the broader community, I have removed
the link from wikibooks, and also asked lulu to pull the book
immediately (but perhaps temporarily).

The important message I want to give here: this is not an issue of the
foundation versus the community, but rather about an individual versus
both the community and the foundation.  We should have been told first,
there should have been a discussion and some consideration given to a
number of important factors.

--Jimbo

Thats that. Now, the issue that arises here is that I don't think the community, or the WMF has an idea of what the GFDL is... Again, I don't have a complete understanding of this issue, or of the GFDL, but it was my impression that the entire point of the GFDL was to be able to do this without talking to the author. Thats what the GPL (at least) is all about, and I'd assume anything by the FSF was about this as well. Meh; most issues here are already brought up by Robert, so I'll just be going now. There is Jimbo's (first) words on this anyway. --Dragontamer 15:56, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Here's the text of the GNU_Free_Documentation_License, should anyone want to review it. Kellen T 16:10, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
The GNU_Free_Documentation_License is absolutely clear:
"The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others."
The issue here is whether WMF are violating the terms of the licence, not whether some other publisher is violating these terms. WMF agreed to allow their logos etc to be copied and distributed by attaching them to documents that have a GNU Free Documentation Licence. It is hard to see how a publisher could violate the licence by publishing and making a profit. Commercial publishing is an explicit purpose of the licence in the recitals. Certainly "pulling" the text from a potential publisher would be a breach of contract and the publisher might have grounds for suing for damages (ie: potential profits lost). This is a dangerous situation, the publisher could offer the book for advanced orders so they can gain a measure of potential loss then sue anyone who prevents them from publishing for the Net Present Value of the loss over, say, ten years. This would allow them to make a profit without even taking the risk of publishing! Looking at the contract they would be bound to win. RobinH 11:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I think you hit the hammer on the nail here, especially if the GFDL becomes the "contract" that is under challenge. Having the content removed from Lulu Press is something that is especially dangerous for the WMF, and had all Jimbo done was simply remove the links to that content from Wikibooks, he might not have been in as dangerous of a situation legally. By giving the impression that WMF logos and terms like Wikijunior Big Cats are forbidden to be used without permission only sets up the potential for lawsuits by those who don't agree with the WMF. I can't emphasis this enough, I don't want to fight this battle in a courtroom. I don't think it needs to go there. But even if *I* don't file the lawsuit, it will eventually happen unless steps are taken to work with the community and address how this content can be republished. A hardcore stance on protecting logos and community terms like Wikijunior will only result in a strong Wikimedia user vs. WMF fight that does not need to happen. --Rob Horning 12:47, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
It is WMF who are in breach of contract by attaching their logos etc. to a document with a GNU Licence then refusing free publication. Surely everyone at WMF must have understood the consequences of a GNU Licence? If terms like Wikijunior are to be kept as an indicator of quality then the GNU Licence should be amended so that such terms are not allowed to be used in the title of books that have been copied out of WMF sites (ie: only allowed to be used in the acknowledgements). This could be accomplished by adding a clause to the licence that states that "No WMF logos or trademarks are to be claimed in the title or content of this book if it differs in content from that available in the published editions section of the WMF site". (This would require a section of Wikibooks to be maintained as a 'published editions' section.) RobinH 13:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I think people need to hold their horses a little bit before we begin a wholesale witchhunt of the WMF. I don't think that they are being in breach of the GDFL, but they certainly would like a little bit of warning before something like this happens. Would it have been such a big deal to tell the WMF of plans to publish, distribute, and sell wikimedia material? Or, for that matter, would it have been a problem to alert the community of plans to publish material before the fact? I mean, even if it isn't a legal necessity, it certainly is a matter of politeness. If we are going to do something new like this, it behouves us to keep the WMF in the loop, and if a particular user wants to do something like this, it should be necessity that the community here at least be informed before hand. If trademarked WMF logos are attached to this book, and copyright problems are found later down the road, the WMF could land itself in hot water. Therefore, it is only prudent that the WMF at least be allowed to look over a book, before physical publication and distribution. Say what you want about what the GDFL requires, or what rights it protects: If we physically publish material in violation of copyrights, and we sell that material, people can get in trouble, regardless of whether we scream "But I used the GDFL!" or not. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 14:01, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
But the entire point of the GFDL is to allow this to happen without telling anyone about it. You're thinking in classical "copyright" situation. The GFDL is copyleft. If the WMF really wanted to have that kind of control over it, then they should have started Wikibooks with a more restrictive license.
The GFDL explicitly allows anyone, anywhere, to publish or modify a work without concent of the author (except "invariant" sections and other legal stuff).
This action by the WMF IMO shows that they either don't understand what the concesquences of the GFDL were, or they don't like the GFDL.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that GFDL only applies to copyrights. So the WMF are allowed to prevent documents from publication due to trademark issues. --Dragontamer 19:35, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I understand the term "copyleft", and I know the difference. What nobody seems to address here is the fact that if there is a problem, the WMF could end up in legal trouble. Regardless of the license that we invoke, if we publish material that is in breach of an existing copyright, there will be lawsuits, either against the WMF, or the publishing author, or both. And I don't think, unfortunately, that anybody here (the WMF included) is in a position to weather such a lawsuit. I'm not willing to put the future of wikibooks, or the entire WMF in jeopardy just because some of us feel that it's probably our right to do so. WMF has the potential to do some very tangible good for this world, and not just act as a large testbed for GDFL legal issues. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 21:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Uh, you're overlooking the part about how the WMF is "publishing" this theoretical copyrighted material on the wikimedia servers. You, me, and the WMF have zero right to say how people use our material so long as it's in compliance with the GFDL. It doesn't matter how we feel about it, whether there's unknown but copyrighted material in there or not. Each contributor licenses their contributions under the GFDL and everyone from that point on is acting in good faith. Kellen T 22:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
No, there is a distinct difference between hosting material on this little server with a modestly small reading audience, mired amoung thousands of pages. There could be all manner of copyright violations or other scandalous material lurking here that nobody has ever found, and nobody really cares about. When you send published material out into the world, and you start profiting from it, people are going to care. Every infraction of the law doesn't get punished, you have to get caught first, and somebody has to have a willingness to prosecute. Nothing motivates like the almight dollar. If there is a problem, we are more likely to get in trouble if the book is in print. whether it makes black-and-white legal sense is not the issue. You may be willing to jeopardize this whole project because you feel it's your legal right to do so, but i'm saying the harm that could come from it far outweighs the potential good. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 22:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
First off; there is much much more to typesetting a book than just copy/paste it into Microsoft word. The project to typeset Big Cats took months of hard work. Any scandalous material has been caught.
Second: not allowing the process to happen is a legal breach of contract. The GFDL explicitly allows this to happen. Right there, we could be getting into legal trouble by not allowing the publication of Big Cats. If this really is an issue, then maybe releasing the entire Wikibooks project under the GFDL was the key mistake in the first place. I'm not a lawyer, but thats my impression of things.
Point is, the WMF gave up the right for that kind of copy-protection as soon as they put the GFDL on this site. Now it may not be the polite thing to do, but if it really is that big of an issue; we have to change the license of this site immediatly. There is no legal protection anymore for the WMF to prevent publications of books developed here in Wikibooks. --Dragontamer 01:00, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Again, I don't see this as an issue whatsoever. By using trademarked WMF names and logos on this book ("wikibooks", "wikijunior", etc), we are setting the WMF to be the target of any legal repercussions that the book might attract. If you are dead set in the desire to publish this material, then leave the WMF and all it's logos and trademarks off it. Legal trouble could sink the WMF for good, and with it wikibooks disappears, and all the potential good it could do in this world disappears also. Saying that the GDFL gives you the right, doesnt make it the right thing to do. Just because you can, doesnt mean you should, especially without the proper planning and foresight. I don't see why anybody would be against including the WMF in the final decision, nor why people whould so brazenly defy the wishes of the WMF just to prove a point about licensing. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 02:29, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
It's not about proving a point about licensing. Anybody has the right to republish wikibooks content provided they follow the GFDL. The WMF has given up the right to be consulted in the final decision. Period. The use of trademarks, etc, is another matter, and one which I think will be soon cleared up. Kellen T 09:07, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Whiteknight, what I'm trying to say is that while I won't do something like this, technically, the WMF cannot prevent anyone (including, say, a malicious user) from republishing any book that was developed here. That is all. Hopefully this trademark issue can be resolved quickly, so that we can get Big Cats out and finished once and for all. And if that user really is a lawyer, then we got nothing to worry about, and this issue will probably resolve very quickly.--Dragontamer 02:07, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Much as I really, really don't want to be convinced by Andrew's arguments, I must admit to being convinced. Feeling a bit sulky about not seeing a future of seeing the books I contribute to on a (real, wooden) shelf someday, but maybe there's a way down the road?

I did just look over the book again (Wikijunior Big Cats), and it doesn't seem to have a references section, let alone footenotes. Maybe that's something we should all keep in mind when adding new material to projects here. SB_Johnny 23:39, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm certainly not saying that we should never ever ever print and sell our finished books, I just want people to consider the actual legal repercussions that could come from our actions. A little bit of caution and planning on our parts could go a long way. If we really want to print and sell these books, we should do a few things: 1) Get the WMF on our side, 2) Make the community aware of the effort, 3) Scan the book very closely for possible copyright problems. The book should have references, if not full-blown footnotes. We have to accept that some information is simply not common knowledge, and therefore requires acknowledgement. I want to see wikibooks get published and distributed, but I don't want to rush out and do it blindly just because "daddy says we can't". That's just irresponsible. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 23:50, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that statements like Jimbo's words above and the statement by Danny after I posted my initial request for comments about this issue seem to put us as Wikibooks users in an adversarial role against the WMF. BTW, Jimbo did apologize for putting into that context with a later post in Foundation-l. I would agree that it is better if we work with the WMF and try to come to an accomodation, but it is not strictly necessary. And as I have pointed out, even if we don't publish this content in book form, it will be published eventually without any active participation by Wikibooks contributors. I would rather have Wikibooks contributors be involved specifically so we can put in references and raise standards for publication.
As for doing other prep work like scanning for copyright violations and improving references, I hope that we can come up with a formal publication team to provide an additional round of review for content like this. BTW, look at German Wikibooks for an example of how this kind of prep work is happening right now. In terms of print publications, the Germans have been way ahead of the English language Wikimedia projects even if it seems like this is one of the first times this issue has been raised. German Wikibooks has a formal Review of the Month section that is to select one book that goes through this final proofreading stage before it is ready for "publication". Perhaps that would be a good thing to do here. --Rob Horning 13:40, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I would be completely in favor of that. If we get together as a community, and create an institution whereby this can happen in a controlled, professional manner, that would benefit everybody. It would be beneficial to any books we publish to have the "wikibooks" logo, and perhaps even the endorsement of the WMF, just to make it look better and more professional. I say we work on a draft for a Publication of the Month mechanism. We can hold votes, design covers, prepare reference and glossary pages, and convert to PDF in preparation for printing. We can send Jimbo a message, and get him involved, so that he doesn't do anything alarmist like request the publishing be suspended (whether it's his legal right to do so or not). We could even contact libraries or other book repositories, to feature our books. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 14:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Creating the Official Print Process

Whiteknight and Robert have the right idea here. We need a formal review before the print process. One that Jimbo and the WMF can be happy enough with to put the "WikiMedia" name on it.

Anyway, the publication process takes significantly more time than a month. So its more like "Publication of the Quarter". We'll need an automatic process of converting wikitext to some kind of elegant printable format (LaTeX, DocBook, etc. etc.) Typesetting each page by hand will take far too long (though, it would be necessary for shorter books like WikiJunior to make a . But for something like German, typesetting that page-by-page will take far too long, and may not even look pretty. We'd do much better if we simply converted to LaTeX pages and then applied a stylesheet.

That would give a consistant style for _every_ published book. Like the O'Relly series of books (which IIRC, is DocBook+custom stylesheet)

We'll also need some way to make a book "stable". We shouldn't be typesetting a book, and then the next day, Chapter 1 is all of a sudden chapter 10 in the Wiki, and then we have to scrap Chapter 1 typesetting all at once.

Finally, I think we need "outside help" on this process. Go on internet discussion groups on typesetting before we start this process, etc. etc. Maybe ask one of them to join Wikibooks :-p --Dragontamer 15:56, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I started a python macro to automatically download a chapter of a wikibook and convert it as LaTeX. At the moment, it is in really early stages, and the code I made is far too ugly to be presented to someone (I'm not a programmer), but it can generate a document with lists, math and sections without manual edition. A good solution to go furter would be to integrate the wiki2pdf python program, which is currently on standby, and adapt it to wikibooks (for example, automatize the download of a complete book from the TOC).
For me, LaTeX is an obvious choice because:
  • wiki maths are written in LaTeX
  • most of the syntax is directly compatible (numbered lists, bullet lists, descriptions, sectionning) with only small changes
  • the typesetting is --almost-- perfect
  • it is available on most platforms
  • I work with LaTeX for my own publications
One of the questions I need to answer before going furter is where is the limit in the automatic process? should we have a code that directly generates pdf completely automatically? when something has to be changed for the conversion, should we change the wiki text or the LaTeX code? I think it is possible to write wikicode that can directly be translated in pdf, but that should be discouraged to avoid the problem that started this thread. Producing a pdf is the work of an editor, so parts like the cover or the foreword should be written by the editor to differenciate the pdf version from the wiki version (and to have a name to put the blame on).
Another problem to create pdf books is the lack of referencing system to cite an equation or a figure from the text (bug 5600 [1] ). This is acceptable in wikipedia, because the articles are relatively short, but this is more difficult to do without for a book. CyrilB 21:44, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
The main problem I forsee is when there is the major editing necessary to change a "web page" into a book. Pages like German/Lessons shouldn't be placed in the book; or if they are, maybe in the introduction. Then those fancy Javascript answer sheets need to be compiled into one single section.
Stuff like that will require manual tweeking. Yes, the majority of this should be automated, but... there are some conventions that just aren't gonna make sense on a book. --Dragontamer 06:55, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree, that's why I think the objectives of a pdf converter should be discussed in details, and adapted to wikibooks. Should we only allow a subset of the wiki syntax that is directly compatible with a pdf document (or even a printed document)? should we incorporate in the wiki text some directives for the pdf generation system (e.g "do not insert this page in a pdf document"? Should we leave the wiki text completely independant of the pdf converter? IMO, the first objective of a pdf book is to tackle the main disadvantage of the wiki process, that is the unstability of the information. A book, with proper editor name(s) on it and a version number is a reliable if not accurate source of information CyrilB 10:58, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Apart from Wikibooks, there are other interested parties in MediaWiki-PDF conversion. Maybe we should gather collaborators or ideas through m:DocBook_XML_export and the Hula project. ManuelGR 12:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
That doesn't seem to split wikibooks into an appropriate setting. Admittingly, that is a good idea, but it seems designed for Wikipedia as opposed to wikibooks. I think a direct PDF approach would be a bad idea, mainly because PDF isn't as much of a workable format as say, TeX/LaTeX or DocBook. InDesign or Scribus looks like a good idea... but the automated generator will have to be _very_ good before I trust it enough to just tweek with a GUI system like that.
I also think we should start making some designs for the printed book. 8 1/2 by 11 paper should be the default mainly because it is so accessable. Anyone with a printer will be able to have the book; while at the same time, someone can order a binded version from Lula or whatever... (Erm... do British use 8 1/2 by 11 letter paper? Cause if they use A1, we may come into a difficult situation...)
Anyway, my first overall idea is to have a wide 2 inch (12 pica) outside margin, and only a 1 or 1/2 inch inside margin.. Chapter titles will take up about the first 5 inches of the page and are bearly indented. Notes are ~5 inches wide, are indented 1 inches from the outside margin and are in their own box. The main text will wrap around the inside. Chapter names are a running side note (no headers) and sidenotes are used instead of footnotes, page numbers are in the footer. Figures and photos are centered. Sections are outdented 1 inch towards the outside margin, and are flushed towards the outside margin. That covers the main parts, and methinks that kind of layout looks good (if you can imagine it) --Dragontamer 02:26, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
If you wanted to open up the Python program and allow others to contribute, I'd be glad to help. On a *nix-based system, a Python script could be used to automate this entire process. We could also generate Makefiles to handle all steps of the process from Wikibook download to the upload of a finished PDF. I have a decent amount of skills with LaTeX and would like to try out more advanced publishing processes. Talk to me on my talk page if you're interested in collaborating. -Matt 03:08, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I won't open my code... because it is...ummmm not exactly nice. Anyway, at the moment, I try to adapt wikipdf (available on sourceforge) to wikibooks, as it does the same thing, also with python and LaTeX. Apparently, wikipdf is not completely compatible with the latest version of mediawiki, so I'm trying to patch it to make it work with the wikimedia projects. I don't know if the cvs of wikipdf is still active, but I think joining this project would be the most effective solution.
Currently, my modified version of wikipdf can convert an article from wikipedia (it should work with wikibooks), but has still many bugs. I'll try to create the corresponding patches tomorrow and make them available CyrilB 22:47, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Update: I contacted the people of wikipdf and they told me that their wiki parser won't be developped any further, because it is too messy to maintain. Their opinion is that this python parser should be replaced by the flexbisonparse already available. I'm in the process of integrated this parser to wikipdf, and I'll keep you informed about this (We should consider using a svn repository maybe?) CyrilB 12:04, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
New update: I modified the code from wiki2pdf, and it is now working (with still lots of bugs, though). Today, I was able to generate a pdf file of the "Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience" wikibook (219 pages), with most of the functionalities (images, references, footnotes... with the notable exception of tables). I only had to do minor edits to the wikitext to allow for a direct translation into pdf (mainly remove <br> tags).
I have to add the licence and author names before to show you the results. I also contacted the people who developed wiki2pdf, in order to know if they are interrested by integrating the code in their cvs. CyrilB 20:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Additional Observations

Some points that do need to be made here. There is all kinds of dicussion about what is and what is not required by the GFDL, and some of the points raised on Wikibooks:Copyrights need to be reviewed a bit and perhaps enhanced somewhat for what sort of things really do need to be in print versions of Wikibooks.

One area we got into huge trouble with was a copyright statement inside the front cover like the one here: Wikijunior Solar System/Copyright Notice

This assumes that the Wikimedia Foundation has a copyright claim to our content, which does need to change I suppose. I have removed the name of the Wikimedia Foundation altogether from this notice now, but that will take some time to propogate elsewhere. A formal copyright statement like this is not strictly necessary according to copyright law (it used to be in the USA), but it doesn't hurt and can be useful. The GFDL does recommend that you add this copyright notice, and may be required in some countries other than the USA or EU nations.

We also need to come up with some standards regarding the naming of authors for Wikibooks. To me, it doesn't seem intellectually honest to name as the "first" author somebody who has only contributed a few spelling fixes, or started a stub of a Wikibook and then left the hard work for somebody else. The GFDL in this situation requires at least 5 contributor/authors of a book to be listed, but the suggestion it can be any random five people from the history list seems absurd as well. BTW, the GFDL says "with at least five of the principal authors of the Document", not that the number five is the maximum number to be listed.

The legal issues here do have an impact on what we are doing, even if it seems boring and unimportant.

The names of the Wikibooks apparently is an issue as well. I believe from my experience that using the name Wikijunior, as in Wikijunior Big Cats, is an appropriate use of trademarks and fail to see what the WMF had a cow over. Still, we may want to be more careful about the use of trademarks in titles of Wikibooks. I would like to know if anybody has experience here to suggest what is an appropriate use of titles like "Microsoft Office for Dummies" or "Linux Kernel Internals", both of which have registered trademarks in them. This is something that perhaps should be added to our naming policy.

I still like having some kid's related name in the Wikijunior books, and if the WMF wants to register Wikijunior, perhaps we will simply depreciate the Wikijunior name altogether to be something else instead that the WMF doesn't own? That would make the Wikijunior name irrelevant, but it is the kind of legal game to play when people play hardball with trademarks. It also shows how absurd it is to demand royalties for the use of trademarks that were generated by the very people who are trying to use them.

I totally agree that we should try and give a consistant "feel" to published Wikibooks, like a monograph series or perhaps like the O'Relly books. This may require more work on a Wikibooks-wide style guide, although I think we should still try to give as much flexability to individual Wikibooks as we can and not straight-jacket with too many rules. --Rob Horning 13:46, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I think you could successfully argue that people become "principal authors" by virtue of the quality and quantity of their contributions. Kellen T 13:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I would agree, but is there some sort of "metric" that can be used to determine this, or is it going to be something subjective? I have argued that the person with the most edits on a Wikibook is very likely to be the "principle author", but it is at least possible for huge contributions to be made in just one edit. Edit counts, however, are very easy to perform. Contribution word counts, on the other hand, would be much harder to calculate. Edit quality is also subjective, as culling out two sentances of over 200 words and reducing that to 5 words that express the same idea more clearly can be considered a high quality edit. At the same time, I don't want to give credit at all to vandals if I can help it. --Rob Horning 17:07, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I have a simple process in the Maple Story book/guide. You just sign your name where you think it belongs. If it is obvious that you aren't a principle author; someone else will push your name down to "proofreader" status, or whatever. --Dragontamer 20:29, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I'll remove the copyright notices from the print and PDF versions I've created, so that should no longer be an issue. Could you please review my Communication Theory PDF, Rob? I would also appreciate comments on the formatting. I can upload the OpenOffice template I use to create PDFs (with any changes you request), which would give a consistant feel to all future books and save others a bit of work. Thanks in advance, hagindaz 19:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I have a licence for Adobe Pro from work, and i've tried my hand at making some PDF versions of books. Unfortunately, a direct conversion doesnt turn out well (at least i cannot make it turn out well). I would certainly be interested in helping out with this process, although i am not particularly well versed in python nor LaTeX. I agree that we should only have one book per quarter (or bi-monthly, at the fastest), because the process can be time-consuming. We would need to set out specific stages. The first two weeks would be all about creating a suitable "printable version" of the website (proof-reading, removing self-references, preparing a list of contributors, etc), the next-two weeks would be devoted to checking text and images for copyvios, and supplying references and footnotes. The third set of two weeks would be devoted to typesetting and conversion to LaTeX or PDF or whatever, and the final two weeks would be for final proof-reading and distribution. Granted, that's just a rough timeline, but we should set out a process in stone, so that we are prepared for this when it happens. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 01:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I created textbook-esque PDF and printer-friendly PDF versions of the LaTeX Wikibook, mostly to learn LaTeX myself. The process took me three hours, with a very brief proofreading. Checking the text for copyvios (using Google?) and a thorough proofreading shouldn't take too long. Switching to LaTeX wouldn't change the process too much. --hagindaz 04:19, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I have a feeling that the WMF will not endorse any of the content that comes out of any of its projects. Certainly, if the WMF does not want the copyright attributed to it, then it will certainly not want the Wikimedia trademark put on anything whose content it is not responsible for. --Munchkinguy 03:18, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo and Wikimedia plan on fully supporting the Wikipedia 1.0 CD/DVD/paper versions, which means there should be no reason for Wikimedia to not support a similar effort on Wikibooks. (That doesn't necessarily mean it would be wise for Wikimedia to endorse and hand out its trademarks to any user who decides to exercise his or her GFDL content duplication rights.) --hagindaz 03:50, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POTM Project Page

I've started a project page for the POTM project. At the moment it is bare bones, but we can start working out some rules for nominations and voting there, as well as some sketches as to how the publication process will work. I think we can move the bulk of this discussion to the POTM talk page, so that we dont have to keep adding it to the staff lounge. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 12:44, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I realized after I created this page, that it might more appropriately be called "Publication of the Quarter", or something similar. We can move the page to that name, if it's a better idea. I didnt even think about it. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 12:48, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why not maintain a logo/trademark free version for hard copy prints?

Just a thought... Rob could use "Wikijunior" in the acknowledgements of the book. RobinH 16:56, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How ready are these books?

I'm not nominating these books to be the the Publication of the Month or whatever the process will be decided to be. Rather I would like your opinions on whether given a read-through these books would be ready to be published:

--hagindaz 00:25, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Intent of Publishing Wikijunior Books

The whole thing started when I was looking at the PDF version for the Wikijunior books. I noticed that they were not very child friendly, so I began to work on a child-friendly layout. The result was a layout that looked a bit strange on a computer, but looked great in a printed book.

Then I heard of the Lulu Press, and their support of Creative Commons and GFDL licenced texts. And the rest is recent history. I felt that it needed to be published in book format because of its empahsis on graphical layout and child-friendly design. Although it is a good idea, I had never intended to do this with the "adult" Wikibooks.

If anyone has any questions, please ask away. --Munchkinguy 03:24, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

A wikijunior book is inherently different ground up design than an "adult" textbook. Your work with Big Cats was necessary to keep the children's attention. Basically... we need to put in a whole lot more effort in designing a wikijunior textbook to keep the child interested in the book, and encourage the child to read it.
As for "adult" textbooks, an automated process can be used. Adults are interested in the material, and while some typography should be used to design the page... I'm pretty sure you don't need to get "creative" with the book. You can have all square pictures for example in an adult textbook and they'll chug along it just fine, but you _need_ to wrap text around giant pictures of cats if you want to keep a child interested in a book. --Dragontamer 15:47, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


Lulu and Pediapress are both possible ways to go; however, see below. Sj 04:23, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. You state my point more clearly than I could have done. --Munchkinguy 17:34, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Future directions for publication of Wikibooks content

While I am very supportive of the efforts of User:Munchkinguy, I would like to propose perhaps an alternative approach the process of trying to create an independent group put together explicitly for the development of printed version of Wikimedia content, and Wikibooks in particular. Perhaps even being involved with the Wikipedia 1.0 development, but the primary emphasis in the beginning will be the printed version of Wikibooks, and perhaps even starting out with some of the better Wikijunior books, as Munchkinguy has done.

There are some issues that have been brought up especially regarding the for-profit aspects of trying to sell this printed content. For that reason especially, I think we need to move some of this discussion to a forum that is independent of Wikibooks and Wikimedia projects specifically so we can cope with the issues that involve money and capital resources.

I have considered Wikia as a possibility, and I have even gone so far as to explictly request from User:Jimbo the opportunity to try and have him help with getting us some webspace on his dime (he still is involved with Bomis and has plenty of web servers available for personal use). As I havn't recieved any reply from Jimbo on this topic at the moment (he has been very busy with Wikimania, so I don't blame him) I am now asking other Wikibooks users if they may have access to some independent website or even a computer with a static URL that we could use to help put this together.

Mind you, there are individuals here who perhaps don't want to even be involved with Jimbo. Fine. It looks like Jimbo doesn't really want to be a part of this so I don't think that is an issue. But there are some decisions that need to be made, and some serious capital investments on the part of the people trying to help put these books together in a printed format.

Here is a basic summary of expenses that I see we need to cope with right away:

  • $25 - Registration of URL for 2 years
  • $100 - Network bandwidth for 1 year (assuming very low bandwidth and only a small number of dedicated users even looking and using the website.... this amount can go up substantially).

Now here is where the expenses really start to pile up

at that point we would have not only a unique ISBN number, but would also have a LOC and Dewey decimal number assigned to these books by the official cataloging authorities at the United States Library of Congress. We could also do regisration with other authorities, but the point here is that would get us into the main distribution channels for book publishing within the USA, including allowing us to list these books with Amazon.com and other on-line bookstores, or perhaps even get them into more conventional bookstores as well. This is a big deal if we can pull this off and get these registrations completed. It also means that you can legitimately offer them to public libraries with the cataloging already completed according to ALA standards, making this much more than just a vanity press.

All of this means that money is going to have to be spent, and this isn't going to be cheap. The only realistic way to pay for this is to set up a group that is trying to sell these books at a modest profit to at least recover these costs to a small extent, perhaps even more so.

I'm willing to go through the legal legwork to do this, and I'm even willing to (at least in the very beginning) do this voluntarily. I'm even willing to fork out the money to help pay for all of this, but I would also be willing to accept help with accomplishing any of these in the beginning, including financial help. It is not like I am an independent dot.com millionaire with extra time and money on my hands.

There is a roadmap that I've been trying to develop, but what I'd like to see is if there is any interest by those monitoring this page to proceed and join me with this effort, of if perhaps I should just go it alone. My intention here is that I want to involved primarily current and past Wikibooks users in the establishment of this group, and to really start to make some substantial changes in the way textbook publishing occurs. I know some will think this is premature, but I think the time is ripe now to start doing this, and really pushing this forward. Please let me know if you are interested in following forward on this idea. --Rob Horning 01:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a great project; it would certainly see use. The only question is : who should be the publisher and take on associated risks -- the Foundation, or a new group (non-profit or not)? I think some of the en:wp 0.5 and 1.0 editors, and people already putting out small CD-snapshots of content, would be glad to see an avenue for print publication of their works... as per the above discussion : Lulu is an option for the final printing. Sj 04:27, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm quite sure that non-profit organizations can raise money and make money from sales (for example: museums charge money for admission, and art galleries have gift shops). There could probably be a non-profit organiztion dedicated to the distribution of Free books. Something that plays on the latin origins of the word "book"... Libers Libres or something like that. Wikijunior has a few problems in this case because some of the images are licensed under non-commercial licenses. Anyway, one might also want to set up a Paypal account to accept donations. Also, from now on, we should use Scribus for layout so that anyone can edit the file (save it in ODF) --Munchkinguy 01:47, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

The problem here is that the WMF doesn't want to deal with these additional complications. I agree that we could have it happen where this could be done via an in-house effort, but I think it would be very, very important to keep the finances segregated for the fundraising activities (such as this would become) and other direct donations to the WMF, and not co-mingle the funds. And as I'm trying to point out, those of use down in the trenches producing this stuff need some financial help to get these physically published, even if all it covers is just the ISBN number and some minor marketing of the book. Those who are spending piles of money are going to feel ripped off, and those who aren't making money off of this stuff are going to strongly wonder why they aren't getting a piece of the action. Some people simply don't care, but I am arguing that once real money gets involved it is going to be a big problem unless this is properly organized.
Also, until now nothing that we have done (including the Jokebook and the video game guides, contrary to Jimbo's original pronouncements on the topic) is going to threaten the non-profit status of the WMF. This activity of selling books is one thing the IRS is going to look at very strongly, even if all you do is sell the books absolutely at cost such as what you have been doing, Munchkinguy. Luckily in our case Lulu Press is very definitely an independent entity from the WMF, so it is Lulu Press that will have to document where the money went, as well as those (such as yourself, Munchkinguy) who have the money attached to their name.
BTW, if there are any CC-by-SA-NC images or any non-commercial use only images in Wikibooks content, we need to get rid of them immediately. That is a copyright violation and should not be tolerated for distribution with GFDL'd content. I'll have to dig through and see what images you are talking about, and perhaps delete them. --Rob Horning 01:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Now, I have to ask (and excuse my naivete), but wouldn't the selling of our books for monetary profit jeopardize our status as a non-profit organization? It would seem to me that if we had an organized community effort to produce books, set prices, collect money, and then distribute (at least part of it) to the pockets of the authors/contributors, we would be a "for-profit" organization. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:11, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes it would, if we aren't very careful. That is why I'm suggesting that we establish a seperate entity that would be initially set up as "for profit" business, so the IRS could go ahead and tax us and not feel we are trying to launder money. And even the discussion of how to run that business can and should be somewhere other than on Wikibooks, at least from my perspective.
In theory, we could at least set up a "special projects committee" that would be working under the direct auspices of the Wikimedia Foundation, but these special committees have from my perspective been very unresponsive to ordinary Wikimedia users and very closed minded on trying to let others into their group. Basically, I consider it to be a signficiant failing of the current leadership of the WMF. But assuming this could be worked out somehow and have open membership to a publications group, there would also have to be some very tough accounting measures and some bureaucratic and legal challenges that would, or as a matter of fact have stopped this from happening in the past. The german Wikipress group is such an independent entity, who pays for their own web server space and is largely indepndent of the WMF, although a number of de.wikipedia users are involved.
I've suggested this in the past, and even wanted to get this going about a year ago. I've avoided that in part because I wanted to get a feel from Jimbo and other top leaders of Wikimedia projects where they wanted to go with this sort of activity, and because I didn't think Wikibooks was quite ready for formal publication. Munchkinguy has sort of forced the issue here, and furthermore we have been preparing significant numbers of PDF versions of Wikibooks now for awhile, so there is a real need at the moment to getting this accomplished.
And as I'm pointing out, if we don't do it, somebody else will, who doesn't care at all about Wikibooks, its users, or even the eventual goal of getting legitimate textbooks into schools and will also make a huge mess of things in the process. I would rather have this be set up by people very sympathetic to Wikibooks, and preferably those who are also involved with the content development itself. --Rob Horning 08:09, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I would be much happier producing PDFs of this stuff, and then "donating" the material to libraries, who could then print it, or make it available by local computer storage. We could print the books, and bind them, and donate them to local schools. My point is that there are plenty of ways we could "publish" this material (in print or electronic form), and distribute them without dealing with the hassles of profit/taxation. I would feel much better about my work knowing that it was freely available, and was not being used for profit. The stated goal of the WMF, even if it is a bit corny, is to make available the sum of human knowledge for free. Under that spirit, I would like to see books distributed for free (or for the cost of publishing). Now, as an alternative, we could print many copies, and "sell" half for donations, and use those donations to publish additional copies for donation to libraries and schools. Any left-over money could be donated to the WMF for continued operation of this project. That might just be my sentiment, but I can guarantee that I won't ever accept a dime in payment for distributing wikibooks content. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:15, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello. I have read this whole discussion page this evening, and one thought immediately pop in my mind (which is likely to direct any further discussion we could have). It appears to me that you have mostly talked (or tried to talk with Jimbo) and that any opinion you may have from the Foundation is the reflect of what you think of Jimbo or of what Jimbo has told you. Are you ready (really ready) to accept the fact that the Foundation is not Jimbo only and to work with other board members, or not? I am not talking rhetoric here. I am dead serious. I am interested in Wikijunior. I would be willing to participate to its development and to its publishing. I would be ready to try to help you fix any legal issues with the tm and co if this is needed. I do not know if it may be of temporary help for you, but the french association have some unused servers. Maybe it might be worth asking if they could host a bit of you.

By the way, can you list the wikijunior you think are ready or near ready for publishing ? Anthere 02:39, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

There are both Wikijunior and normal Wikibooks that are ready for publishing or very near ready. In addition to Wikijunior Big Cats, the Wikijunior Languages has enough content that would be worth publishing at least a condensed version as a "best of" type publication. Many of Wikibooks:Featured books are also worth taking a strong look at, so I would say close to about 40 books are ready for publication or very close with only some editorial effort, and not so much content development.
As far as getting help from the Foundation for printed materials, I have raised related issues to this on Foundation-l numerous times, and the sense that I get from there is that the Foundation collectively (more than just Jimbo here, but also most notably from Brad) is that from an official position the Foundation does not want to be involved in the print publication of content. BTW, I do understand that Jimbo does not always speak on behalf of the whole Foundation, but often his words have been used to that effect. I'll try to write you independently and let you know of some more issues, and if I have to use the French Wikimedia chapter to publish books in North America, that would be in some ways the ultimate insult, wouldn't it? --Rob Horning 00:08, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I gave you a long answer by email, which I will ask you to keep private :-) Uh.... using american servers to host a french speaking wikibooks is not felt by us as being an insult ;-) I confirm that the Foundation is not very willing to act as a publisher to protect iself from lawsuits. A question I have meant to ask is what would you need the servers for ? Anthere

The main purpose is to protect the WMF from potential lawsuits. And because this is a for-profit activity that might affect the tax-excempt non-profit status of the WMF if we discuss this into too much more detail. I would like to use a server both for organizing the company as well as to provide a store front that could showcase the printed books and act as an order point for people who want to purchase the books. Lulu Press offers a storefront, but I would like to maintain some independence from any one printing house so we could in theory switch to other printers in the future, as the needs arises. This is also why I want to buy ISBNs directly, rather than purchase them through Lulu Press (who offers them at a discount, but requires you to buy all of the books through them when you go that route).
As far as this "Publication of the Month page is concerned, everybody here can still work together to make the PDF files that would be available to any publisher, and that activity is not necessarily going to be a problem with the tax-exempt status of the WMF. The publisher is merely the person who actually is putting the content onto a piece of paper and keeping it clean. And assuming the liability for publishing the content. --Rob Horning 16:21, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
I would be very willing to work with all members of the board here to make the pubication of these materials happen. However, and alot of wikibookians i'm sure will second this opinion, wikibooks frequently feels very isolated from the rest of the wikimedia world. We have very little contact with anybody from the board directly, except through mailinglists, where I don't think wikibookians (with few notable exceptions) are generally active. We know that Jimbo isn't the board incarnate, but we seem to hear him saying "no!" the most frequently and the most loudly.
I've been having a very hard time so far trying to figure out why we would have received much oposition on this publication matter at all. Disseminating free educational content seems to be a noteworthy goal that the WMF should be behind 100%. If we can make 40 books or more available, for significantly less money then commercial alternatives, and distribute those books to schools and libraries, then I think we should make it a priority to do so. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:41, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Robert, sounds great! I'd love to be involved in such an organization. Just tell me what you need. --Munchkinguy 20:21, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks_talk:Publication_of_the_Month"
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