Office Hours Monday, misc.

I'll be in my office from 11-2 on Monday for exam-related questions ...

Also, this is interesting ... a lawsuit claiming that students' notes infringe on the professor's copyright. I will not comment directly, there is subtlety involved in this case ...

For the record, my notes are under an open content license. Basically, you can distribute them in whole or in part in any medium you like, without changes. That is, libre, not merely gratis, or free as in "free speech," not "free beer." If you modify the notes, or want to make them into a book, you do need my permission. I doubt you'll break the bank selling them, since they are free online though ...

Tangentially related anecdote follows, with little relation to ph102 ...

I published my Ph.D. thesis under a similar license. I had written several chapters which I though were a good review of my field at the time, and though the best thing would be to make it freely available to anyone who could use it. At the time I felt very strongly that information should be free whenever possible, without creating real or artificial barriers for those who genuinely want to learn something. If your hard work can benefit someone else, that is reason enough to do it. I still feel that way, and that is why nearly everything we do in ph102 is online, for free. When I get to it, anyway.

In my thesis (and in the notes, for that matter), I even carefully remade every figure myself to avoid using any copyrighted material whatsoever- since I had such a hard time finding figures I could freely use, why not save someone else the trouble down the road. It can be tough to find nice explanatory figures for basic things that aren't the Intellectual Property of someone or another. My aim was subversion: if I have to make my own figures anyway, give them away for free, so no one else has to go through the trouble. "Information wants to be free," so the saying goes.

So, a few months after my Ph.D. or so, I was in a conference listening to a talk, and about three slides in was one of my figures in the introduction. Six months later or so, a colleague asked me to help him write a review article. Guess where a good number of the figures came from! This was some years ago, so and things have become outdated a bit, but still every now and again at a conference, I do a double-take, and realize I'm looking at my own pictures ...

That is probably the most satisfying feeling I've had as a scientist thusfar. And that is the idea behind the notes. You're already paying to listen to me - and paying well - there is no reason you should pay a second time, or pay to share what you've learned when you leave here.

On that note, I still have quite some editing to do ...

* Paper and ink still costs money of course. Hats off the the SUPe store, who did a brilliant job, and went out of their way to keep your cost at a bare minimum.
** This post is obviously my own viewpoint, and not that of UA. Disclaimer applies.