Ok, this is not my idea, I heard it on NPR but I wanted people to think about it and move the idea along. This professor (at Standford?) convinced his dean to allow him to create an open source text book for the course. The students could download it for free, our get a bound copy for a nominal cost. The professor makes no money off it and uses an open source license that allows others to modify the book for their courses and repost their version. So much like open source code, the book can evolve and get better over time.
With all the cost problems the universities are having and the crazy cost of books, why not try this? Universities force professors to "be published" in order to get tenure and raises. Much of the published work is in special academic magazines that exist only so professors can get published. Most of the published articles are totally esoteric and unread. So why not let them publish open source text books instead of this useless drivel?
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I'm in favor of easy availibility of textbooks, but I don't think it will ever happen.
Unfortunatly, very few professors will ever be willing to jump ship from the current system, because there are real profits, if only for a few.
As for open-source, I think a book is like a painting or an engineering design--it's something done partly on ego. So when you get a whole committee involved, you take away the ego-fullfillment and hence, the 'fun' of writing the book. Even in wikipedia, when someone rewrites something I wrote, I feel wronged.
When I was in college we had professors that mimeographed their own 'book' to use, and even that was sold in the bookstore for a high price. So there are other methods--its just that huge tomes with lots of pictures look more serious and impress that you'll be learning more.
I think the i-tunes model has shown us that music isn't a piece of plastic, so I do have hope that a 'book' can become something different with less manufacturing cost, but I don't think you can (or want to) ever take the profit out of it. Who would write a book that'll be given away for free?
I'm entirely for this idea, under the stipulation that all proposed edits made to the textbook would be first reviewed by the teacher or qualified assistant of theirs. It would be terrible if this turned into another Wikipedia - a source that has great knowledge, but, due to being opensource, is often disregarded.
In terms of who would give their books away for free, a couple professors actually do. For instance, my Molecular Bio. teacher just posted all the pages in his proposed textbook on a course website, essentially giving it away. He saved the students a lot of money, and for that, class morale is greatly improved. I'd be happy if more teachers took this approach.
I recently heard about this idea already in action! Check out the TED Talk (an amazing website, fyi) and the site itself:
http://cnx.org/
"http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html"
At least, I think this is what you are getting at.
I don't think stupid/mean people accidentally/purposely putting misinformation in the text book would be that bad. Just like in Wikipedia, you could have an option to look at the history of edits, and certain users (who should be required to register) would eventually be blocked for abuse of their privileges. People would just need to be trained on what "wiki" really means and how best to use it. Right now people seem to use wikipedia exactly like they use an encyclopedia, which is missing parts of the whole idea.
If possible, I hope I can be talking about universal, so that the public benefit.
A better approach might be the use of e-books. The reason texts are so expensive is that publishers only earn an income on new book sales, not on used books. In addition, printing a book has a high fixed cost that is usually spread over very few copies. With an e-book, students can just buy an e book for the semester and not need to sell it back to the bookstore, saving the bookstore the trouble of buying back books and shipping them off to used book buyers. With very little publishing costs and with publishers receiving an income on all book sales, the cost would drop significantly. The campus bookstore might even benefit by selling the book readers and focusing on the higher margin items like sweatshirts, t-shirts, iPods, etc.
The TED talk I agree is a great listen and Wikibooks are there and doing this...
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page