Since I love both teaching and open source development, I suppose it
was only a matter of time before I attempted a survey of open source
text books.  Here are my notes on the projects I've come across so
far:

Light and Matter
================

The [Light and Matter][LM] series is a set of six texts by Benjamin
Crowell at Fullerton College in California.  The series is aimed at
the High School and Biology (i.e. low calc) audience.  The source is
distributed in [[LaTeX]] and versioned in [[Git]].  I love this guy!

Crowell also runs a book review site [The Assayer][assayer], which
reviews free books.

Radically Modern Introductory Physics
=====================================

[Radically Modern Introductory Physics][RMIP] is David J. Raymond's
modern-physics-based approach to introductory physics.  He posts the
[[LaTeX]] source, but it does not seem to be version controlled.

Calculus Based Physics
======================

[Calculus Based Physics][CBP], by Jeffrey W. Schnick at St. Anselm in
New Hampshire.  It is under the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License, and the sources are free to alter.
However, there is no official version control, and the sources are in
MS Word format :(.  On the other hand, I wholeheartedly agree with all
the objectives Schnick lists in [his motivational note][CBP-why].

Textbook Revolution
===================

Calculus Based Physics' Schnick linked to [Textbook Revolution][TR],
which immediately gave off good tech vibes with an IRC node
(#textbookrevolution).  The site is basically a wiki with a browsable
list of pointers to open textbooks.  The list isn't huge, but it does
prominently display copyright information, which makes it easier to
separate the wheat from the chaff.

College Open Textbooks
======================

[College Open Textbooks][COT] provides another [registry of open
textbooks][COT-physics] with clearly listed license information.
They're funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (of NPR
underwriting fame).

MERLOT's Open Textbook Initiative
=================================

The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
([MERLOT][]) is a California-based project that assembles educational
resources.  They have [a large collection of open
textbooks][MERLOT-physics] in a variety of fields.  The Light and
Matter series is well represented.  Unfortunately, many of the texts
seem to be "free as in beer" not "free as in freedom".

Open Access Textbooks
=====================

[The Open Access Textbooks][OAT] project is run by a number of
Florida-based groups and funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
However, I have grave doubts about any open source project that opens
their [project discussion][OAT-project] with

> Numerous issues that impact open textbook implementation (such as
> creating sustainable review processes and institutional reward
> structures) have yet to be resolved. The ability to financially
> sustain a large scale open textbook effort is also in question.

There are zounds of academics with enough knowledge and invested
interest in developing an open source textbook.  The resources
(computers and personal websites) are generally already provided by
academic institutions.  Just pick a framework (LaTeX, HTML, ...), put
the whole thing in Git, and start hacking.  The community will take it
from there.

Anyhow, everything I've read about this project smells like a bunch of
bureaucrats churning out sound bytes.

ArXiv
=====

Finally, there are a number of textbooks on [arXiv][].  For example,
Siegel's [Introduction to string field theory][string] and [Fields][]
are posted source and all.  The source will probably be good quality,
but the licensing information may be unclear.


[LM]: http://www.lightandmatter.com/
[assayer]: http://theassayer.org/
[RMIP]: http://kestrel.nmt.edu/~raymond/teaching.html
[CBP]: http://www.anselm.edu/internet/physics/cbphysics/
[CBP-why]: http://www.anselm.edu/internet/physics/cbphysics/AboutTheBook/WHY.pdf
[TR]: http://textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Main_Page
[COT]: http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/
[COT-physics]: http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/opentextbookcontent/open-textbooks-by-subject/physics.html
[MERLOT]: http://www.merlot.org/
[MERLOT-physics]: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/materials.htm?category=2736&&materialType=Open%20Textbook&sort.property=overallRating
[OAT]: http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/
[OAT-project]: http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/projectInfo.html
[arXiv]: http://arxiv.org/
[string]: http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0107094
[Fields]: http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9912205


[[!tag tags/teaching]]