Hi Heather —

I wanted to start a conversation with you about adapting an open textbook for MATH163. I expect you’ll be able to highlight some things to consider as I undertake this project.

This is the resource I am planning on adapting: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/books/10/ . The textbook is released under CC4.0(BY+NC), which, from my understanding gives me licence to transform and build upon the material and then release it under a similar licence. My plan is to use this text as a base to create a custom text for the course. This will mostly consist of pruning the some of the material that my students aren’t prepared for, adding some material, and making minor notational changes throughout.

One immediate question/concern that I have is copyright of the .pdf output versus copyright of the .tex source file. The authors are resistant to release their source files to me. (I recognize that they are not obligated to). If I cannot get access to these my plan is to apply for funds from GMC to have a student, essentially, recreate the source files. I worry about possible copyright issues here.