Petter Reinholdtsen

As my regular readers probably remember, I published a French and Norwegian translation of the classic Free Culture book by the founder of the Creative Commons movement, Lawrence Lessig, the last year. A bit less known is the fact that due to the way I created the translations, using docbook and po4a, and also recreated the English original. And because I already had created a new the PDF edition, I published it too. The revenue from the book is sent to the Creative Commons Corporation. So I do not earn any money from the project, I just earn the warm fuzzy feeling that the text is available for a wider audience and more people can learn why the Creative Commons is needed.

Today, just for fun, I had a look at the sales number over at Lulu.com, which take care of payment, printing and shipping. Much to my surprise, the English edition is selling better than both the French and Norwegian edition, despite the fact that it has been available in English since it was first published. In total, 24 paper books was sold for USD $19.99 between 2016-01-01 and 2016-07-31:

The books are available both from Lulu.com and from large book stores like Amazon and Barnes&Noble. Most revenue, around $10 per book, is sent to the Creative Commons project when the book is sold directly by Lulu.com. The summary from Lulu tell me 10 books was sold via the Amazon channel, 10 via Ingram (what is this?) and 4 directly by Lulu. And Lulu.com tells me that the revenue sent so far this year is USD $101.42. No idea what kind of sales numbers to expect, so I do not know if that is a good amount of sales for a 10 year old book or not. But it make me happy that the buyers find the book, and I hope they enjoy reading it as much as I did.

The ebook edition is available for free from Github.

If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native language, I would be happy to help make it happen. Please get in touch.

For mange år siden leste jeg en klassisk tekst som gjorde såpass inntrykk på meg at jeg husker den fortsatt, flere år senere, og bruker argumentene fra den stadig vekk. Teksten var «The Relativity of Wrong» som Isaac Asimov publiserte i Skeptical Inquirer i 1989. Den gir litt perspektiv rundt formidlingen av vitenskapelige resultater. Jeg har hatt lyst til å kunne dele den også med folk som ikke behersker engelsk så godt, som barn og noen av mine eldre slektninger, og har savnet å ha den tilgjengelig på norsk. For to uker siden tok jeg meg sammen og kontaktet Asbjørn Dyrendal i foreningen Skepsis om de var interessert i å publisere en norsk utgave på bloggen sin, og da han var positiv tok jeg kontakt med Skeptical Inquirer og spurte om det var greit for dem. I løpet av noen dager fikk vi tilbakemelding fra Barry Karr hos The Skeptical Inquirer som hadde sjekket og fått OK fra Robyn Asimov som representerte arvingene i Asmiov-familien og gikk igang med oversettingen.

Resultatet, «Relativt feil», ble publisert på skepsis-bloggen for noen minutter siden. Jeg anbefaler deg på det varmeste å lese denne teksten og dele den med dine venner.

For å håndtere oversettelsen og sikre at original og oversettelse var i sync brukte vi git, po4a, GNU make og Transifex. Det hele fungerte utmerket og gjorde det enkelt å dele tekstene og jobbe sammen om finpuss på formuleringene. Hadde hosted.weblate.org latt meg opprette nye prosjekter selv i stedet for å måtte kontakte administratoren der, så hadde jeg brukt weblate i stedet.

Did you know there is a TV channel broadcasting talks from DebConf 16 across an entire country? Or that there is a TV channel broadcasting talks by or about Linus Torvalds, Tor, OpenID, Common Lisp, Civic Tech, EFF founder John Barlow, how to make 3D printer electronics and many more fascinating topics? It works using only free software (all of it available from Github), and is administrated using a web browser and a web API.

The TV channel is the Norwegian open channel Frikanalen, and I am involved via the NUUG member association in running and developing the software for the channel. The channel is organised as a member organisation where its members can upload and broadcast what they want (think of it as Youtube for national broadcasting television). Individuals can broadcast too. The time slots are handled on a first come, first serve basis. Because the channel have almost no viewers and very few active members, we can experiment with TV technology without too much flack when we make mistakes. And thanks to the few active members, most of the slots on the schedule are free. I see this as an opportunity to spread knowledge about technology and free software, and have a script I run regularly to fill up all the open slots the next few days with technology related video. The end result is a channel I like to describe as Techno TV - filled with interesting talks and presentations.

It is available on channel 50 on the Norwegian national digital TV network (RiksTV). It is also available as a multicast stream on Uninett. And finally, it is available as a WebM unicast stream from Frikanalen and NUUG. Check it out. :)