Free Learning Resources
Introduction
Often, Free software advocates find that they can logically translate their beliefs to other naturally abundant resources traditionally restricted by copyright. One of the most important of these is educational materials.
Free information is more widely distributed, thanks to its liberal licensing, and can therefore reach more of its knowledge-hungry audience.
The Free information meta-project is not nearly as far along as Free software, though. Thus, much of the focus right now is on creating Free information. Fortunately, while you need a great deal of software to operate a Free system, you don't need much Free information to learn something without losing your rights.
The Free Software in Education group operates the Free Curriculum project, whose aim is to encourage contributors and collect their contributions if necessary. See the Free Curriculum FAQ to learn more about the project, or the "Free Curriculum letter", an intentionally brief letter to faculty asking for contributions.
Free Learning Projects
While we'd be pleased to collect as much as contributors submit to us, any Free contributions to any group would be welcome. Some other such groups, that support only Free materials, are listed below.
- The FreE-learning Project aims to release "Free Educational Content", in its own words, under the GNU FDL. It carries a European focus, and FSF Europe is officially involved.
- Wikibooks, related to Wikipedia, is creating textbooks for many subjects in the Wiki style. Check here if you would like a relatively mature project to which to contribute.
- Wikipedia is the eclectic Free encyclopedia project, fulfilling the Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource concept proposed on gnu.org.
- Project Gutenberg publishes plain text versions of public-domain works. If you are looking for a copy of a classic book, your search should start on their FTP servers.