Group: DRM-free Textbooks
The information on this page was first published on Group:Defective_by_Design/Day_Against_DRM_2019/Free_Culture_Educational_Books.
Introduction
More and more electronic version of books get imposed on students to follow a class. Many of such books comes with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), which also forces students to run nonfree software. Some publishers now only offer DRM-encumbered subscription disservices to view the materials. Paper books has no such restrictions, however book publishers can decide not to publish new versions of them anymore.
This page attempt to list electronic educational books that have no DRM, along with their license.
Free licenses for manuals are also essential for freedom as they enable to adapt the book, and redistribute it.
Books and repositories of books
| Link | Topic | Class | Country | Schools using it | Associated homework | License | How to contribute | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.mutopiaproject.org/ | Free/libre sheet music transcribed with GNU Lilypond | Music | Anywhere | Various private instructors (Add your school here) | Transcribing more music | CC BY-SA is default | via the git repository (https://www.mutopiaproject.org/) | May need new maintainers |
| Free_High_School_Science_Texts | physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc | grades 10-12 | South Africa, other? | ? | CC-BY | ? | ||
| Math 105 - Math In Society - Open Textbook | Maths | liberal arts majors | Portland, USA | Seem to be made specifically for liberal arts majors in the Portland Community College | ? | Mix of creative commons, including:
|
? |
|
| Math in Society | Maths | liberal arts major | USA? | Washington State faculty, other | cc-by-sa | Send an email to the author | ||
| opentextbookstore | Many topics | College, Other? | USA, Other? (the books are in English) |
|
cc-by-sa, other? | ? | ||
| Computer Science without a computer | CS Unplugged is a collection of free learning activities that teach Computer Science through engaging games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around. Free activities for classroom or home. | /!\ Nonfree (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) | probably impossible (nonfree) | The books looks really nice, it would be a good idea to try to convince them in a friendly way to free the book. |
List of repositories (also) containing books
We keep an up-to-date list of links on the DRM website: If you missed a link on the page or list here on the wiki, share it with us.
- Archive.org - Free eBooks, textbooks, etc;
- Project Gutenberg - A virtual library of over 60,000 free eBooks;
- Europeana - A lot free public domain books from Europe;
- Digital Public Library of America - +35.000.000 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States;
- Open Library - +1000k libre books;
- Books Should Be Free - +7000 of free public domain books, like audiobooks or text files;
- The Literature Network - Offer searchable online literature for the student, educator, or enthusiast. Currently have over +3500 full books and over 4400 short stories and poems by over 260 authors;
- Authorama - Public Domain Books, featuring completely free books from a variety of different authors, collected here for you to read online or offline;
- LibriVox - Founded in 2005, LibriVox is an extensive library of free public domain audiobooks;
- Legamus - Makes free audio books from texts that are in the Public Domain in Europe;
- Open Culture - Download +800 free eBooks;
- Institutional Repository of the Federal University of Bahia - Free Books, Audiobooks, etc;
- https://creativecommons.org/tag/math/
- https://www.lelivrescolaire.fr : they claim that their books are under creative commons licenses. TODO: Check which ones are and if they also require other books under other licenses along them (like teacher books).
- https://linuxfr.org/news/le-frido-livre-collaboratif-de-mathematique-de-niveau-agregation-et-un-peu-plus
- https://www.sesamath.net/ https://manuel.sesamath.net/ and https://manuel.sesamath.net/index.php?page=telechargement_1spe_2019
- http://www.ralentirtravaux.com/
- http://www.exobiologie.info/
- Wikisource - +100K of free public domain books in several languages;
- http://fui.sdf.org/blog/DRMFreeBooks.html seems to also curate a list of DRM-free books (not necessarily text books, but may have relevant links that should be placed here later.)
- Add repositories you know about here
This page was a featured resource in September 2022.
