On Wed, 24 Mar 2010, Matthew Jadud wrote: > If you borrow and edit a large chunk of someone else's text, are you > an "author?" Were they an "co-author" of the book? > > I think, when borrowing, you should acknowledge the lift at the end of > the chapter where the borrowing took place, and perhaps duplicate that > in an overall ack at the end of the text. This acknowledges their > contribution, but they are not directly a contributor to the new, > unique work that the book you're writing represents. Therefore, I > don't think they would be "co-authors" in the traditional sense. (Yes, > this isn't "traditional," but at some point you might want an ISBN, > and you don't want librarians to have a brain hemmorage when you try > and put something on them that doesn't fit Dublin Core. They will make > it fit, regardless of any new ideas you throw at them...) > > I would leave "co-authors" of the text to mean "people who contributed > *directly* to the assembly of the artifact you are calling a book." If > there are people who don't fit the title of author, add a Colophon a > la many O'Reilly texts, where you acknowledge the editors, anyone who > does design work on the book, the tools used, etc. I don't think that > the re-use of CC-licensed text necessarily means that the original > author had any creative input into The Work that the new > book/article/etc. represents.
All right, this is a good articulation of that funny feeling in my gut. Thanks. > When you freeze and go to SVN, I'll be glad to provide editing support, > if you want someone to do a front-to-back read of the text. I'm on > spring break, and can break free a few hours to go straight through. > Username "jadudm" is preferred for SVN, if this is desired in the next > day or two. Actually, I'd prefer that this happen on the wiki. Once we've gone to SVN, we're essentially final. If you could go through a full read on Thursday evening or Friday morning, though, of the draft tagged "0.8-FINALEDIT", that would be perfect. --g -- Educational materials should be high-quality, collaborative, and free. Visit http://opensource.com/education and join the conversation. _______________________________________________ tos mailing list [email protected] http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
