I think it would be very difficult to produce the “collective.” Nice idea though.
I have been considering, in new books and new editions to books I have written, to change the license for the book examples to AGPL, but for people who purchase a book, they get a commercial use license. I make all my recent eBooks available as a free download, or people can pay. I use the statistics of which books more people pay for to guide how much writing effort I put into different topics. On average I get about 50 downloads for each paid for book. I have been happy with this process.
What is changing is that as I approach my 71 birthday, I am getting pressure from family and friends who retired a long time ago for more of my time, and as much as I love working, I will probably “retire” from paid work in the next year or two. I think that making writing my “job” again might be a good way to still enjoy staying current with deep learning and AI in general, and also earn a little money from doing so.
I do worry that the dual licensing approach might turn off some readers, so I think I will try out this plan with a new book and see how it works.
EDIT: might be of interest: by far my most paid for book is my Common Lisp book, followed by my Haskell and Hy (Python Lisp) books. Those books are scheduled to get new editions. Since almost all of my work in the last 7 years has been deep learning based, my next planned new book is a practitioners guide to DL, from my personal perspective.
> I do worry that the dual licensing approach might turn off some readers
I've not read any of your books (I tend to first look on O'Reilly Learning when I need a book on a given topic, and so far when I've needed a book on a topic you have written on I've found a satisfactory book there) so maybe it will be different for your readers, but that approach would definitely turn me off.
I buy (or read via a subscription service like O'Reilly) books to learn, not to obtain a code library. If I learn something from the book, even if that happens to be in the form of code, I want to be able to treat it the same way as I do things I learned from my college textbooks.
I don't want to have to be remembering that this thing I learned from that book can't be used on these projects because I don't have the right kind of license.
I'd be OK with it if the code that is actually in the text of the book is public domain or under a permissive license and the author includes a link to download more extensive code that is not under such a license, as long as the code in the text of the book is sufficient for learning the material the book purports to teach.
> I don't want to have to be remembering that this thing I learned from that book can't be used on these projects because I don't have the right kind of license.
You don't have to. "This thing you remember" is an idea, and ideas are not subject to copyright, only expressions. Unless you're copy-pasting something out of a book this is a literal non-issue... and if you are in fact copy-pasting then frankly you deserve it since copy-pasting is the nadir of engineering practice. It is literally you turning your brain off and ingesting someone else's mistakes. Don't do that. Textbooks are for learning ideas, not lifting code.
I have 3 colleagues in their early 70s, we develop silicons for AI and DL. One is the tech leader, another one is algorithm/compiler, the last one doing FPGA. I asked one of them about the retirement, the answer is: "tried that, too boring"
> change the license for the book examples to AGPL, but for people who purchase a book, they get a commercial use license
I love this idea.
Would you sell it as "Buy Book (includes bonus commercial use license)" or "Buy Commercial License (includes bonus printed book)" or both? Might make a difference for organizational programmers trying to expense the purchase.
Speak of organizational customers... how would you make that work? Each book grants a license to one dev, allowing derivative works to be relicensed once?
N.B.: IAAL but IANAIPL and IANYL. Please don't take anything I say as endorsing any particular course of action.
This sounds like a very viable option, especially if you make it easy for someone to expense the copy of the book. I don't see how adding an option can really annoy the existing readers too much; perhaps you could make it MIT licensed for purchasers?
You may also want to consider the legacy - many wonderful texts and code has been lost to time because the author passed on and the heirs didn't bother continuing to maintain/make it available, and without being able to contact someone, nothing can be done. Perhaps an "abandonware clause" that X years after publication the code can be considered BSD licensed?
I have been considering, in new books and new editions to books I have written, to change the license for the book examples to AGPL, but for people who purchase a book, they get a commercial use license. I make all my recent eBooks available as a free download, or people can pay. I use the statistics of which books more people pay for to guide how much writing effort I put into different topics. On average I get about 50 downloads for each paid for book. I have been happy with this process.
What is changing is that as I approach my 71 birthday, I am getting pressure from family and friends who retired a long time ago for more of my time, and as much as I love working, I will probably “retire” from paid work in the next year or two. I think that making writing my “job” again might be a good way to still enjoy staying current with deep learning and AI in general, and also earn a little money from doing so.
I do worry that the dual licensing approach might turn off some readers, so I think I will try out this plan with a new book and see how it works.
EDIT: might be of interest: by far my most paid for book is my Common Lisp book, followed by my Haskell and Hy (Python Lisp) books. Those books are scheduled to get new editions. Since almost all of my work in the last 7 years has been deep learning based, my next planned new book is a practitioners guide to DL, from my personal perspective.