[ZDP] Open Publication License

[lpetrycki@mcp.com]

> 
> > B. To prohibit any publication of this work or derivative 
> > works in whole or in part in standard (paper) book form for 
> > commercial purposes is prohibited unless prior permission is 
> > obtained from the copyright holder.
> 
> This would be interesting, though. We could extract money out 
> of publishers this way. :) If we don't want money, we don't need this 
> though. The rest of the license takes care of the credit, and it 
> takes care of the publishers (including the compilation on a CDROM) 
> notifying us beforehand (so we can get in up to date changes etc).
> 
> 
> The money question is interesting anyway. It's possible that 
> to bring this to a good end, we need a kind of Linus Torvalds style 
> editor. That is, someone who puts in a lot of time and effort in 
> collecting, converting, layouting, editing, and completely rewriting > the
drafts that everybody contributes. This is a daunting task. If we > had a
dedicated person doing this, perhaps the best way to spend any > money ZBook
would make is to fund this person.
> 

Let me try a bit more descriptive about how we as a publisher view the OPL
and how it fits into our business model. For any book project we sign a
standard agreement with an author, group of authors, or company with the
inclusion of the OPL. The publisher assists the author in the preparation of
the manuscript including soliciting and compensating for outside reviews
throughout the writing process, development editing, copy editing, indexing,
page layout, and proofreading. We also print, bind, distribute, and market
the book. For any publisher's significant investment in a particular book,
they are basically the "official" publisher and compensate the author
accordingly. Of course any other publisher can use the material, but they
are bound by the license requiring among other things the use of the
originating publisher's name on the book. The spirit of license is to
provide a service to the open source community, not for one publisher to
republish another's work verbatim although it is allowed under the license.

Laurie



Laurie Petrycki
Executive Editor

New Riders Publishing      lpetrycki@mcp.com
201 W 103rd St             317 817 7483
Indianapolis IN 46290      www.newriders.com