Slashdot Mirror
Linux Device Drivers, 2nd ed. Released Under GNU FDL
Rosco P. Coltrane writes: "I don't know if this is old news, but I've just noticed that the "Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition" book by Alessandro Rubini & Jonathan Corbet has been published under the GNU Free Documentation License v1.1 by O'Reilly." Making the entire book available is a nice gesture by O'Reilly. And anything that helps get more device drivers written is a plus in my book... We reviewed the first edition, but obviously there have been one or two tiny changes since then.
Making the entire book available is a nice gesture by O'Reilly.
... perhaps that has changed as FDLed documentation has continued to sell, and thus make O'Reilly a profit, anyway).
... I recall being very surprised at which publishers had given the FSF constructive feedback when they were writing the FDL, but no longer recall which Houses they were. This is an important point as the goal was to create a license which would allow publishers to make a profit while preserving the freedom of the information contained within the books being sold).
This wasn't a "gesture" by O'Reilly so much as a gesture by the Book's author. O'Reilly will agree to publish authors who insist on it to release their work under the FDL, but the authors must explicity request this (O'Reilly doesn't volunteer the information that they allow it, and to all appearances would prefer authors not do so. At least, that has been their stance in the past according to several people I spoke with
The Free Software Foundation is really pushing for all documentation about Free Software to be released under the FDL, which they crafted with the help of some very big publishers (I want to say Random House but I don't think that is correct
O'Reilly does deserve some credit for allowing authors to do this (and some criticism for being relatively mum about the option when signing authors), but the Author is clearly the one who deserves our highest praise, the best form of which would be purchasing his book and supporting his decision as well as underscoring O'Reilly's wisdom in allowing it.
--
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Really. My shelves are already loaded up pretty heavily with O'Reilly books, and this gesture just makes me want to add more to my collection.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
It seems that a lot of people really like this book, and I'm definately going to skim the on-lin version to see if I want to buy it, but I wonder how hard is it for someone with intermediatte experience coding to learn to make drivers? Anyone able to share their ordeals with it?
The first edition of the book was quite good for this; it had many examples of simple drivers scattered within to illustrate what it was talking about, which was very helpful.
My best advice would be to a) write a couple of toy drivers to get a feel for things, and b) take apart an existing driver and see how it works. I wrote an I/O space interface driver that I used to play with parallel ports, and a PCI-scanning driver; both purposes are already served by other parts of Linux, but it was still fun. I also had the dubious joy of wading throught the LML-33 video capture card's driver. I learned a lot by doing both, though, and the book was an invaluable reference.
Andamooka has a nice amount of books freely available online, and they're annotatable too. Worth checking out.
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
I was going to buy the first edition some time ago, but I couldn't find it in the local book store and I don't like to buy books of this nature without having a quick read first.
The online availability of this edition solves this for me. I spent 10 minutes reading the html version before I realised its exactly the book I need, and the next five minutes ordering it online.
Well done the authors and may you sell many more copies for having the insight to make it freely available online.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
I agree that thepublication of this book under the FDL is a nice gensture and that having such detailed documentation freely available will make it possible for developers to release more device drivers at lower cost to them, but my convern is fith the concept of the FDL
The GPL works because it creates a potential service market by allowing complex software to be made freely available, and creating the need for consultation and support of the product. The FDL, on the other hand, has no such potential. Providing documentation under the FDL with software under the GPL makes sense, however providing documentation under the FDL alone does not create a post-provision market for services. It doesn't allow for any sort of value-add, except to make the material freely available online in some thuroughly indexed and referenced form (which the publisher is doing anyway). It does get the author and the publisher some name recognition, but O'Reilly was already recognised as the leader in such documentation, and service to the OSS comunity by a publisher.
The only value-add I can see is the provision of the document in printed form, for which customers are asked to pay. This works so long as printed books are the dominant form of knowlege distribution. This is rapidly changing. At some point in the vary near future, such printed and bound documents will become secondary to the online publication of the same works - for me it' just a matter of getting a better monitor so I don't go bug eyed after reading 10 pages online.
So, at some point the FDL will not serve a purpose or act as a market driving force as the GPL does - where the GPL creates through the potential for massive large scale peer review, an enviroment of cut-throat competition among developers, driving the creation of the highest quality software available. There is no similar force that the FDL creates. Does it really serve a valuable purpose, other than to allow the software to get his name ot there in a positive light?
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
But honestly, I own dozens of O;Reilley books and have happily spent what I have on them because they are excellent reference materials. I know if I managed to get interested in linux driver coding, this freebie would be great to get me hooked, but once I was, I'd surely buy the book just to have it readily handy to flip through, mark up, etc :)
O'Reilly has done wonders for Unix as a whole even before the Linux revolution took off - I still have my 1st edition Perl bible and will never part with it - It helped through too many projects at work.
So I say congrats to Oreilly and they have NOTHING to worry about - even if they give their books away for free online - they're good enough to pay for, even if just to support the efforts of OReilly as a whole. Keep up the great work!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Another very good FDL'ed book is the "GNU automake, autoconf and libtool" book written by Gary V. Vaughan, Ben Elliston, Tom Tromey and Ian Lance Taylor.
This book has helped me a lot in understanding the interaction between automake, autoconf, and libtool. The GNU manual for these tools are excellent, but the book does a great job in showing how the three interaction. I'd say this is a must read for beginning outsource programmers.
The hardcopy's ISBN is 1578701902 and can be found at bn.com
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
It seems that a lot of people really like this book, and I'm definately going to skim the on-lin version to see if I want to buy it, but I wonder how hard is it for someone with intermediatte experience coding to learn to make drivers? Anyone able to share their ordeals with it?