[FC-discuss] Free Thesis Project Released Today

[rob at robmyers.org]

Quoting Chris Morris <cm195902 at gmail.com>:

> Well, a blog lives or dies on my effort alone. If I want to run my own
> web server to host it, I am responsible for it. What happens when I
> upload my thesis to my free culture chapters site and 10 years later,
> the chapter no longer exists, and the site is taken down? If someone
> is mirroring it, why don't they much a universal site. What about the
> students at the vast majority of universities that have no free
> culture club?

I often find links to old papers that have disappeared with their  
author's old student homepage. Archive.org doesn't always have them.  
So organized repositories would be good for preserving access to  
papers online.

CC licensing makes running such a repository easy. No custom  
agreements or legal work, just use the permissions the CC licenses  
give you.

To avoid the dangers of a centralised repository, a system of mirrors  
could be used. This works well for Free Software projects, and papers  
aren't as bandwidth-heavy as audio or visual files so universities  
that support the scheme could easily consider running one.

- Rob.