O'Reilly Gives Away Free Programming Ebooks (oreilly.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: There's now a section on OReilly.com offering free ebooks about computer programming. There's four free Java ebooks and seven about Python, as well as an "Other" section which contains ebooks like C++ Today, Swift Pocket Reference, and Why Rust? But there's also some broader categories for Open Source and Software Architecture ebooks, as well as separate sections for their free ebooks about Data, Security, Web Development, and the Internet of Things.

Comments

Re:Who needs books?

[markus]

O'Reillys books are universally really high quality. Back in the 1990s and 2000s, I'd buy their books pretty much sight unseen. They were never cheap, but they were definitely worth every penny.

These days, there are so many amazing online resources, it is rare that I would get use from a printed book. I am a little sad and nostalgic, but I honestly don't see their business model lasting all that much longer. Even if all of their books were readily and cheaply available online, I probably still wouldn't read them. It's simply the wrong way to present the type of information that I need.

Re:Define "free"

[lister king of smeg]

You know full well that in this case free just means they aren't charging any money for it. It doesn't mean that they are giving away their rights on these books and so they don't have to make them available for a straight anonymous download. They do these sorts of deals to get potential customers to their site. If you could just at hand out anonymous links to the books then it would fail their goal.

If you don't want to give them you details then don't get the books. Easy!

Or use a disposable email account and junk info like I always do for crap like that, I wonder how much crap info VMWare Cisco or others has in their DB's from people like me giving fake info they demand everytime you download VMWare Player, or cisco drivers