About Potto Project

Potto Project is an open content project that is intended to be used by the community to write quality textbooks for colleges and anyone who is interested. Using the open content model we believe that a website such as this is important to the open content movement. In fact, this project started because of the idea of open content. On one side, big organizations, (such as the Hollywood companies), promote laws that intend to create the unthinkable: copyright [essentially] forever.

While the Founding Fathers of this country thought that the copyright should only be for a limited time, the courts and some legislators now think otherwise and indeed passed the ``right'' laws. This project is one reaction to this kind of thinking. While the driving force behind the ``copyright forever'' is economic (why we give copyright in the first place), it is immoral. If we can remove that force, the ``copyright forever'' push will be also dwindle down and perhaps will be eliminated.

In the last 5 years three textbooks have been constructed which are available for download. These books contain innovative ideas which make some chapters the best in the world. For example, the chapters on Fanno flow and Oblique shock contain many original idea such as the full analytical solution to the oblique shock, many algorithms for calculating Fanno flow parameters which are not found in any other book.

In addition, Potto has auxiliary materials such as the gas dynamics tables (the largest tables collection in the world), Gas Dynamics Calculator (Potto-GDC), etc.

The combined number downloads of these books is over half a million (December 2009) or in a rate of 20,000 copies a month (to see more about the downloads estimate here). Potto books on compressible flow and fluid mechanics are used as the main textbook or as a reference book in several universities around the world. The books are used in more than 165 different countries around the world. Every month people from about 110 different countries download these books. The book on compressible flow is also used by ``young engineers and scientists'' in NASA according to Farassat, NASA Langley Research Center.

The initiator of this project, Dr. Bar-Meir, is hopeful that others will joint his efforts to create many diverse textbooks for students and professors in college. While some might not agree with the reasoning behind the initiation of this web site, I hope you (the reader) will consider doing so.

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About Potto Project

Potto Project has been created by Dr. Genick Bar-Meir and friends to build open source software and open content textbooks for college students. Over 500,000 (half million) Potto Project books were downloaded from 165 different countries since 2005.

Potto Project is under open content licenses, which means that you will always have the freedom to use it, make copies of it, and improve it. You are encouraged to make use of these freedoms and share the textbooks and program with your family and friends!