Sunday, September 26, 2010

License Change for Life Artificial

Gaz wrote in a recent comment:
[...] I hope you license this under some permissive license (ie CC:SA/NC/ND like Stross' Accelerando) so it can be distributed to iOS and Android devices via Alkido book reader and others.
This is a great idea, and I'm grateful for the suggestion. The work is henceforth available under the Creative Commons cc by-nc-nd license. I have a little work to do in posting this in the documents themselves, and I hope to get that done this weekend. Note that the "no-derivative works" part of the agreement does not prohibit transforming the text into new electronic formats. That is, you are explicitly allowed to take the .pdf version and convert it to a format for some new e-reader you just bought, and then send a copy to a friend (the attribution has to be there, and you can't charge for it--that's the other two parts). If you send me a copy, I'll put it on the site.

This does present a bit of a problem I'd like advice on, if anyone's game. To wit: once I modify the documents to include the new copyright statements, I can't easily make edits anymore. So if there's some godawful error in Part III that someone catches after I post it, I don't have any way to fix the copies hypothetically winging their way around the internet tubes on bit torrent or whatever. I hate to stoop so low as putting version numbers on the text, but maybe an edit date stamp isn't too much. Once the whole first novel is complete I'll post it in one piece with a complete full edit. Maybe that's enough?

Gaz also suggested an email list for notification when the new bits arrive. I'm happy to do that, and thought I'd just create a little CGI form for that purpose when I get a moment. In the meantime, my crude solution is this: just send me a note by email to stanislavzza@gmail.com if you'd like notification as installments come out, and I'll make a mailing list. I'll make sure the RSS feed is working on the blog too.

Thanks for all the support and interest!

2 comments:

  1. What is wrong with version numbers? They have been around in books since forever... it's just because printing is so slow, that we don't easily recognize 'editions' as what they are.

    You don't have to make them too prominent in the human-readable text, but the files should have some such.

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  2. That's true. Hadn't thought about editions as version numbers. Well, I'll do my best to not need to use this 'feature'. Thanks for the comment. Those are some cool pics on your site. Very envious!

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