Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: Opening Up Linux Journal and O'Reilly
Author: Jacob Levy Posted: 8/25/1999; 9:50:50 AM Topic: Opening Up Linux Journal and O'Reilly Msg #: 9857 (In response to 9850) Prev/Next: 9856 / 9858
You wrote:However, consider this. I could open a business and publish, on paper, all of O'Reilly's books, if they were open source. Now the question is how much would you pay for the O'Reilly printing, especially if you knew that the copy I was selling had exactly the same words? This is the issue for O'Reilly.
and
BTW, in case it isn't clear, I don't think O'Reilly should open source their books. But I do think they should be on the web, in full text and indexed by a search engine, etc.
I guess I didn't state this clearly enough:
It's fine by me for them to retain the copyright so that they can protect their dead tree business model. But for me the key issue is access, free access for the virtual format via the web. Your comments strengthen my gut intuition that the pie grows bigger for everyone if they put up the content for free access on the web. And if you make it possible for people to add to the knowledge expressed in the original text, poof! Unimaginable possibilities open up.
This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:52:04 PM.
© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.