Is there any foss alternative to gitbook?

Technology Software
#1

HI guys, I was wondering if any cooperative has been working in building an alternative of gitbook.com that is foss (free and open source).

I know https://hackmd.io/ and https://etherpad.org/ but I think it does no have versioning functionalities.

Any hint?

#2

I just found https://www.bookstackapp.com/ and https://rust-lang.github.io/mdBook/. Bookstack is open source under MIT license. Althought iā€™ts not foss seems cool. Anyone used it?

#3

MIT is FOSS (even FSF agree).

Iā€™ve tried BookStack but didnā€™t really like it.

GitHub Pages or MkDocs best alternatives Iā€™ve found.

mdBook looks good too, thanks!

1 Like
#4

Awesome! Nice. So thereā€™re actually some alternatives to pick. Is MIT FOSS? I thought that with MIT, the license does not enforce to replicate the license freedoms if you add it to your code. Like plenty of software using MIT python libraries are proprietary, right? Maybe Iā€™m missing some information on the licenses schemes.

#5

Thatā€™s correct. The MIT license isnā€™t ā€œcopyleftā€ so proprietary software can modify and distribute it without releasing the source code.

However, according to the FSF, it is Free software because it respects the four Freedoms

I think, If youā€™d like, you can fork the project, relicense it under a copyleft license (I believe you have to retain the attribution to the original copyright holder) and your fork will be licensed accordingly

1 Like
#6

Yes exactly. MIT isnā€™t copyleft but copyleft does not equal FOSS

1 Like
#7

Hereā€™s another one:


#8

Weā€™ve used mkdocs with mkdocs-material ā€“ itā€™s got a couple of nice features to link back to a git web interface which turn it into more of a wiki.