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Prentice Hall To Publish Open Content Licensed Books

Posted by timothy on from the you-can-call-him-bruce dept.

lma writes "Bruce Perens has convinced Prentice Hall to publish a series of books under an Open Source license. The 'Bruce Perens' Open Source Series' will be available first as hardcopy in bookstores, and the Open Source text will be available electronically a few months later. Prentice Hall is counting on people buying the books even though the electronic version will be freely available later. I like the model, since I prefer to read paper, but like the electronic version for reference."

11 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Assuming the quality of the titles... by Nutrimentia · · Score: 3, Interesting

    this may prove to be a defining moment in the battle of copyright control. If these books sell, and continue to sell after the electronic copy is available, it will add some serious weight to the argument that digital availability of information precludes sales and marketability.

    I'm a bit surprised they are publishing in hardcover instead of a Sam's/O'Reilley/etc sturdy paperback though.

    --

    Etc, etc, ad nauseam, and so on and so forth.

  2. Amen to that! by rindeee · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I will ALWAYS buy good 'ole ink and pulp as I much prefer reading them. For reference I much prefer the searchability and rapid access of electronic (and the ability to carry a bunch of them on my handheld). I have gone so far as to "un-bind" some of my favorites, scan them and OCR/index them so that I can search them electronically. Then I have to go buy another copy to replace the one I destroyed. No more! I say hurray for this. Now I just hope these books don't suck.

  3. why do I suspect by SHEENmaster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    that when it finally comes out, months after the book, it will be in a clunky format such as pdf rather than something like sgml that we can convert to linked html or plain text as we desire.

    cat ebook.txt | grep explorer | grep bug | less to get all the paragraphs relating to the latest explorer bug.

    For an ebook format, I want something parsable and convertabl; pdf meets neither requirement.

    --
    You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
  4. Re:Novel Concept, But Not the First by wideBlueSkies · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Eckel is to be commended for his bravery, and generosity in doing this.

    I own the printed versions of his Thinking in C++ & Java books, and keep the HTML versions at home & office.

    It would be nice if ORA did this more often, instead of leasing access to electronic copies through Safari.

    --
    Huh?
  5. Re:Oreilly / MySQL Reference Manual by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I don't want to diminish O'Reilly's efforts, they did the original Open Sources book mostly in Open Source, and a number of others, and some other publishers have as well (about my favorite is the Ruby book). But Prentice Hall is the largest technical book publisher in the world.

    Thanks

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  6. Re:My prediction... by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Let's give them a run for their money :-) To do that, we need to make this a big bookshelf. Want to write something? I need authors. It won't make you rich, but it will do good for both you and the world.

    Thanks

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  7. Re:This will work for technical titles by EvanED · · Score: 3, Interesting

    >>Also, we'll probably see a rash of lawsuits or lobbying by the textbook industry to help them maintain the monopoly they have. After all, we wouldn't want continually improving and affordable materials to fall into the hands of our students. Oh! The horror!

    Really. It's my first year, second semester (well, that's misleading; officially it's my fourth, so I'm taking higher level stuff than your typical second semester person) at Penn State and I'll be paying ~$450 for ALL USED books. Outrageous, especially considering that tuition+room&board+fees for me is little over $1000/semester.

  8. Re:Will those books be available in Spain? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Interesting
    We would like to hear from people who want to translate books.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  9. topics? by drDugan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    really -- this was asked above but not aswered.

    What topics are you looking for? Do they have
    to relate to open source software? Some
    guidelines would be niec if you are soliciting
    authors.

  10. Re:My prediction... by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Mostly I am looking for user or developer documentation for Free Software. I would hope that I'll get some of the software authors, but I recognize that many of them would rather code. Note also that writing a book does not make you wealthy (me neither). It doesn't pay as well as consulting. On the other hand, if you aren't working anyway... The benefit of writing a book is that you are valued more as an employee, consultant, or scholar. You know the cliche: He wrote the book about it!

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  11. Re:What about tomorrow? by yeOldeSkeptic · · Score: 4, Interesting
    But, what happens when books become like CDs (easy and inexpensive to make exact functionality copies)? Would enough people pay for the hardcopy to support the author enough to put food on his table?

    Yes they will. If they value their time and the book enough. Even if a laser printed copy of a downloadable is cheaper by a few dollars from the press-printed book, I strongly believe that most people would still go for the convenience and quality of the latter. Why?

    Well, 10 dollars is certainly worth much less than the time that I have to spend printing, collating and having the book bound professionally. I would rather pay the extra ten bucks and avoid the aggravation. So, yes, there will be a market for open books for as long as the value of the book is much greater than the cost of buying it.

    As I see it, open books will revolutionize the industry in the following way.

    1. No book will ever be out of print. Troff is several decades old but it is still alive and kicking in the form of groff. Because groff is open sourced, it will continue to exist in the net somewhere and it will continue to be improved even if only incrementally. Compare that with say, WordPerfect which is almost on the way to extinction. (Please no counter-arguments about warez or how it is still on your hard disk!)
    2. Financially successfull open licensed books will be of a better quality than comparable closed-licensed books. Why? Because in order for the book to succeed it must be of the quality where people are willing to pay for it when a downloadable copy is available. This leads to...
    3. Cost of publishing will drop. Publishers will be able to test probable success of any book cheaply by having it downloadable on the net. All the publisher has to do is log all downloads (in order to count popularity) and provide a survey form inquiring whether the reader would buy a hard-copy of this book if it is available on the market and for how much. No need to print 10,000 copies of a book and then discover what a crap it is. However, it could also mean...
    4. Writing will cease to be as profitable a profession as it is today. But as RMS himself will say (with paraphrasing) just because book writing is not very profitable does not condemn you to write books. If writing books won't put food on your table, then perhaps you better find some other profession. On the other hand...
    5. Some Joe will discover a hidden talent in writing. It is so easy to publish an open book, (put a copy on the net while he is creating it) that many bored and talented individuals may just give it a try. Publishers may just discover the next Stephen King, Richard Feynmann and Donald Knuth this way! It could even be you!