About the Open Books Project
 Over the years, O'Reilly & Associates has published a number of "Open Books"--books with various forms of "open" copyright. The reasons for "opening" copyright, as well as the specific license agreements under which they are opened, are as varied as our authors.
Perhaps a book was outdated enough to be put out of print, yet some people still had an urgent need for the information it covered. Perhaps the author or subject of the book felt strongly that books should be published under a particular open copyright. Or maybe the book was written collectively by a particular community, as in the case of our Community Press books.
O'Reilly holds the copyright to some of its books; individual authors hold the copyright to others. Regardless of who holds the copyright, the decision to apply an open copyright, and the choice of license, is left to the author or authors of the work. Some of the licenses include the GNU Free Documentation License, the Open Publication License, and the GNU General Public License. The content of these "Open Books" is posted here.
In addition to the books (with their various open licenses) listed here, O'Reilly has adopted the Creative Commons Founders' Copyright, which we'll apply to hundreds of out-of-print and current titles, pending author approval. More information about why we're committed to honoring the Creative Commons Attribution license is in our press release, Publisher Restores Balance to Copyright with New Legal Option from Creative Commons.
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