Although I have been (and remain) largely unimpressed with the quality of the great majority existing open source math textbooks, I now believe there is hope on the horizon.
The model used by open software developers, namely of modifying existing materials and improving them, can apply to math textbooks. Rob Beezer’s PreTeXt tool gives authors a means of producing digital textbooks that are superior to existing popular commercial textbooks.
With PreTeXt you can convert a (properly marked up) plain text file into html format that is optimized for reading on mobile devices. It uses MathJax for the mathematical expressions, and the developers are designing to take advantage of open software like the Sage cell for interactivity and WeBWorK or MyOpenMath for homework checkers.
Another cool feature is that PreTeXt can take the same source text file and output LaTeX and hence pdf, for students who may want a printed version of the textbook.
The readability on mobile devices, the adaptability of the source files, the tools for interactivity, and the attention the developers pay to accessibility issues are huge benefits to adopting PreTeXt books (which, by the way, are not limited to math—PreTeXt has also been used in computer science, poetry, and music textbooks).
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