Ask HN: What are your views on open-sourcing literature?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5868935

by sanketsaurav • 13 years ago

3 4 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Open-sourcing has done wonders in software, and now in hardware as well. How about, we open-source literature as well? We could have a platform like Github, just for those who write. Think of open-source fiction novels, non-fiction books, literary pieces, so on and so forth. What does HN think?

gw666• 13 years ago

I think this idea could work, and I don't see why an experiment couldn't be done on Github--after all, it'd all be just text files.

People could fork, say, a short story, rewrite parts, and submit a pull request; the original author would maintain control in this case. If the original author didn't like the change but someone else did, that person could fork the forked version (the one containing the change), add additional changes, then submit that as a pull request, etc.

It could get messy, but it also sounds like it could be really interesting, with the end result being a tree of competing stories.

Maybe somebody could submit a short story, publicize its availability, and see what happens.

sanketsaurav• 13 years ago

Exactly. I think its definitely worth a shot. I'm not at all a literary guy, but I tried to pitch this idea to some of my friends who write. While some said its a great idea, others were skeptical. They argued, literature is so different from coding. And writes don't like to share credits.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

People can make money creating open source software because firms making commercial use of the software, offering professional services around it, etc., are willing to pay the software developers, either by hiring them, by funding non-profits that pay them, or by purchasing non-software materials (e.g., books) from them. This makes it a viable economic choice alongside creating closed-source software.

How does this work for literature? I see where "free" benefits those creating derivatives and readers, I don't see how it would be viable for authors, except, perhaps, with a ransom/patronage model.

Infrastructure-wise, existing systems that work for software (e.g., github, bitbucket) are already optimized for text-based content and would clearly work well for literature (in fact, they are already used widely for documentation accompanying software projects, which is [technical, nonfiction] literature.)

bowerbird• 13 years ago

"it might be good for some other people," says every writer in the world, "but not for me."

-bowerbird

Ask HN: What are your views on open-sourcing literature?

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