I have implemented a group work feature (allowing peers to edit the same entry; the entry is owned by a group) in the dataform, which does not require new roles or overriding permissions. The feature is similar to the other approaches in that it does not track (yet?) the history of modifications. It is a bit more flexible than overriding the 'manageentries' capability approach in that you can prevent deleting an entry.
With respect to downloading the content as an end product, as any other module the glossary/database/dataform may be exported to rich html, that is html page including linked files. In the dataform you can also export files as base64 such that all the content can go into one html file. Either way, this means that the content may be accessed outside the module/course/moodle.