
Free Open Source Textbooks Growing in Popularity in College Classes - KeepTalking
http://business.time.com/2012/08/10/free-textbooks-shaking-up-higher-education/
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saryant
The CS department I was in (at a small liberal arts college) often used either
textbooks written by one of the professors or previous editions.

The use of previous editions was great. It's not like discrete math changes
that much anyways so using a copy we could get off Amazon for $1.70 was a
great help compared to departments asking us to spend $80-200 on a brand new
book.

Several professors also wrote their own books and just tossed the PDF on their
website. One professor wrote a book on Scala for intro to CS classes, another
on numerical calculus, a third (no longer in use) on Java and OOP for
freshman.

I'm sure this isn't the only CS department in the world with this tradition
but it's one that works very well. While you certainly run in to the issue of
bad professors forcing subpar work on students, if you've got profs you can
trust with the job the results, IME, can be quite good and better than
commercially available texts.

~~~
fqqv
> One professor wrote a book on Scala for intro to CS classes

Is it publicly available ?

~~~
saryant
It should be on bookshelves soon but I don't know if the PDF is online
publicly.

If you're interested, the class schedule with lecture notes for last spring's
course is here: <http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~mlewis/CSCI1320-S12/>

~~~
patricklynch
"Hey, This college sounds familiar."

Dr. Lewis' book is listed on Amazon as having a publication date of October
30, 2012.

[edit: The author himself will tell you; If you're already familiar with
programming basics, and just want to learn Scala, you'll be better of with
Odersky's text.]

~~~
saryant
That's a very good point, the book really an intro to CS text that happens to
use Scala.

(Hey Patrick! Long time since the RCC days...)

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japhyr
These business models sound reasonable, as long as the supporting materials
are truly supplemental. An open textbook that is complete (for example, with
problems and exercises), is a good thing. If the text becomes an advertisement
for the supplemental materials, then we have missed the mark.

~~~
jimhefferon
> then we have missed the mark

I don't agree. I have offered an open text, including free supplemental
materials, for 15 years (so I think I have some credibility). But other people
want to do other things. Free is Free for the authors as well as for the
readers. If someone wants to have a go at giving away a text and selling the
slides for classroom use then I wish them luck. If students and teachers find
that useful then good.

