Slashdot Mirror
Michael Hart, Inventor of the E-book, Dead At 64
FeatherBoa writes "Michael Hart, the founder and long time driving force behind Project Gutenberg and 1971 inventor of the electronic book has died at his home in Urbana Ill, on Sept. 6th 2011. Project Gutenberg is recognized as one of the earliest and longest-lasting online literary projects, has spawned sister projects in Australia, Canada, Germany and other locations to transcribe public domain literature and make it available via the Internet."
Let me just say that I admire the man for all that he has done. For his vision, and efforts to push us all to bigger and better things.
Project Gutenberg will be a lasting legacy.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
I wrote a short obituary for him.
Yeah, nothing more fitting to commemorate the death of the founder of Project Gutenberg than to kill their server under a proper slashdotting...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I volunteered with Project Gutenberg for about 5 years in the1990s. Michael was something of an iconoclast, and had his hand in all sorts of things. I had the pleasure of meeting Michael at his home once, and last was in contact with him two years ago.
In a number of conversations with Michael (mostly online) our opinions on methods often clashed, but I have no doubt that he sought to serve humanity to the best of his ability, and especially to bring knowledge and opportunity to everyone in the world - without exception. He strove mightily to break down the barriers to knowledge, and to dethrone the gatekeepers who seek to prevent ordinary people from joining the company of the elite. I used to doubt his assertion that such gatekeepers exist, or that anyone would be so vile as to purposely prevent meritorious students from gaining an education - but I have come to realize that he was mostly correct. When the Digital Millennium Copyright Act came before Congress, Michael was the chief voice speaking out against it - but sadly, few people listened, or even understood why it was important. Michael's work has done a great deal to break down the barriers to knowledge that he despised, and for this we should all be thankful.
Rest in Peace, Michael. You did well.
To do it right they should slashdot it forever and put a link on the slashdot footer to Project Gutenberg.
The guy did more for the preservation of knowledge than you or I could ever hope to do. Even Richard Stallman owes him a debt that can't be repaid - for the idea that we own the knowledge that we share, and its value increases with its commonality. His ideas are the inspiration for the free software movement, Google Books, and many other things.
The first time I downloaded an eBook from Michael Hart, his site was on The List - and The List was under a meg. I read it a dozen times, and have gotten hundreds since. My Android tablet is now configured to search for books "Project Gutenberg first." Over the years I've given back what I could, when I could, but to be honest I got more than I gave. The man had Vision, with a capital V. I'll never forget the premise: that with digital technology replication is costless so if an ebook is worth $1 and distributed to all the people of the world, that work creates billions of dollars worth of knowledge.
Now's a good time to remember and give again what I can.
The passing of a dear friend is seldom more painful than when you owe them something you cannot repay. Farewell, Michael Hart. If the best I can do now is to do what I can to help push your vision forward, I owe you that.
Holy hell but it's dusty in here all of a sudden.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Please, let me be the first among us to say "Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on too."
AC's are what they are, and slashdot is engineered to accept them so that no voice is silenced. I'm OK with that. But to come in here, on this day, and piss on the memory of a man who never did harm and blessed us all with the wealth of ages because you couldn't figure out one of the simplest websites on earth? Fuck you. I mean that sincerely. Die in a fire, please.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
... has written a heartfelt and thoughtful obituary:
http://www.gutenberg.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_S._Hart
If you want to honour Michael, go and proof a page at http://www.pgdp.net/ - the literary equivalent of pouring one out for this internet giant.
Copyright law is a tricky thing, and Michael Hart had to navigate through that maze all while trying to preserve books which were in theory part of the public domain in spite of the best efforts of many people to assert copyright on these older works and somehow getting away with it. In as litigious of a society that the United States of America has become, legal disclaimers are not just useful but necessary.
If you read the fine print, you could take Gutenberg texts and send them into "every possible nook and cranny", but you merely had to remove anything which mentioned the Gutenberg Project by doing so. Copyright was never asserted, and what you are quoting here is one of but many paragraphs like this.
What you are complaining about here is the need for lawyers because other lawyers want to screw you over and grind you to dust. Michael Hart lived in the real world, unlike some people. That he also had to pay rent, buy food, and do a few other things all the while trying to promote the archiving of the world's historical literature into electronic form is just more proof that sometimes people just don't get it. Michael Hart certainly didn't die a very wealthy man in terms of Wall Street recognizable assets, but he certainly left the world as a whole much richer as a result of his living on this planet and and certainly left a legacy that will live on for generations to come. That is a hell of a lot more than I can say about you (whoever you are AC) or even myself.
I think his reasoning behind ASCII-only content was not only sound, but prescient. I have seen dozens (hundreds?) of data file formats come and go, where the only thing from previous eras is a data code which pre-dates not just the internet but electronic computers in general. Even now, HTML is not nearly as standard, where it seems like everybody (especially the major browser developers) want to keep tweaking the standard with all kinds of bells and whistles.
In this sense, in spite of people otherwise complaining, I think it was a good move on his part to "wait and see". At the very least, any data files containing Gutenberg Project e-books should be in a format that is either completely in the public domain (as ASCII was back when he started unlike nearly all other text formats at the time) or something whose specification is patent free and where the specification is available under an open source license (like the GFDL or CC-by-SA). HTML fits that definition, but we happen to be lucky that it does. Had he gone with WordPerfect files years ago (then considered a reasonable standard when I first came across the Gutenberg texts), there would be some real problems today. Don't get me started on Microsoft Word files.
I respect what he's done, and I somehow don't think he's going to be offended by my post. I can't believe you're getting offended by a thread on Slashdot. Aren't there some goatse trolls you can go and reply to?
which is totally what she said