PickAxe 2 licensing

[Dave Thomas]

Folks:

I've been thinking long and hard about the licensing of the new version
of the PickAxe.

As you know, soon after publishing the original book we released it for
free under an open license. We did this for two reasons. First, we
wanted to see the Ruby community grow, and we felt that having the book
available would help. We think that this happened. Second, we hoped
that we'd set a trend, and that all Ruby books would end up
open-sourced. This didn't happen. In fact, what seemed to happen is
that folks picked up the free version of the PickAxe and used the money
they'd saved to buy one of the other, closed titles.

So, for the new book, we won't initially be releasing the entire book
for free. Instead, we'll be contributing to the community in different
ways. First, I've already taken all the updated reference section (with
something like 150 new or significantly different methods) and released
it to core developers. It's been used to add RDoc comments to the Ruby
source. That represented many months of work. Second, we'll use the
fact that we're in control of the publishing process to keep the costs,
and hence the price, down.

I wanted to announce this now so there's no surprise when the book
comes out (probably in October).


Cheers

Dave

 

[Jamey Cribbs]

So, for the new book, we won't initially be releasing the entire book
for free. Instead,

I will gladly pay money for your new book. The first version of Pickaxe
was what got me into Ruby in the first place. Buying it was probably
the best computer book purchase I have ever made, and I have bought a
LOT of computer books (just ask my wife).

You guys definitely deserve to make money for your efforts. Don't worry
about how this impacts your contribution to the Ruby community. I would
say that other than Matz's creation of Ruby, your book has had the
greatest impact on the growth of Ruby.

Just my $.02.

Jamey

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[Tom Copeland]

You guys definitely deserve to make money for your efforts. Don't worry
about how this impacts your contribution to the Ruby community. I would
say that other than Matz's creation of Ruby, your book has had the
greatest impact on the growth of Ruby.

+1

Tom

 

[Kaspar Schiess]

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Hash: SHA1

Dave Thomas wrote:

| Folks:
|
| I've been thinking long and hard about the licensing of the new version
| of the PickAxe.
|
| As you know, soon after publishing the original book we released it for
| free under an open license. We did this for two reasons. First, we
| wanted to see the Ruby community grow, and we felt that having the book
| available would help. We think that this happened. Second, we hoped that
| we'd set a trend, and that all Ruby books would end up open-sourced.
| This didn't happen. In fact, what seemed to happen is that folks picked
| up the free version of the PickAxe and used the money they'd saved to
| buy one of the other, closed titles.
|
| So, for the new book, we won't initially be releasing the entire book
| for free. Instead, we'll be contributing to the community in different
| ways. First, I've already taken all the updated reference section (with
| something like 150 new or significantly different methods) and released
| it to core developers. It's been used to add RDoc comments to the Ruby
| source. That represented many months of work. Second, we'll use the
| fact that we're in control of the publishing process to keep the costs,
| and hence the price, down.
|
| I wanted to announce this now so there's no surprise when the book comes
| out (probably in October).
|
|
| Cheers
|
| Dave
|

If it's only half as well done as the first book, it will have to be in
my library. It's only fair that you would collect some money for your work.

Looking forward to that book !

kaspar

semantics & semiotics
code manufacture

www.tua.ch/ruby
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[Jim Menard]

You guys definitely deserve to make money for your efforts. Don't worry
about how this impacts your contribution to the Ruby community. I would
say that other than Matz's creation of Ruby, your book has had the
greatest impact on the growth of Ruby.

+1

Jim

 

[Lyle Johnson]

I wanted to announce this now so there's no surprise when the book
comes out (probably in October).

I believe that I'm speaking on behalf of a lot of people when I say
that your (and Andy's) contributions to the Ruby community over the
years -- in terms of code, documentation and advocacy in general --
have been invaluable and greatly appreciated. I paid for my
now-tattered copy of the first PickAxe book and encouraged others to
do so as well, even though it was available for free online. If anyone
gives you grief about this decision, let us know and we'll beat them
up.

Also, be sure to let us know as soon as you're taking pre-orders for
the new book.

 

[Sean O'Dell]

So, for the new book, we won't initially be releasing the entire book
for free. Instead, we'll be contributing to the community in different
ways. First, I've already taken all the updated reference section (with
something like 150 new or significantly different methods) and released
it to core developers. It's been used to add RDoc comments to the Ruby
source. That represented many months of work. Second, we'll use the
fact that we're in control of the publishing process to keep the costs,
and hence the price, down.

Good for you! You shouldn't be expected to give the fruits of your labor away
for free. I can't wait to see how it turned out.

Sean O'Dell

 

[gabriele renzi]

il Fri, 9 Jul 2004 23:57:07 +0900, Jamey Cribbs <[email protected]>
ha scritto::

completely subscribed, every char, colon, and comma.

 

[Friedrich Dominicus]

Folks:

I've been thinking long and hard about the licensing of the new version
of the PickAxe.

As you know, soon after publishing the original book we released it for
free under an open license. We did this for two reasons. First, we
wanted to see the Ruby community grow, and we felt that having the book
available would help. We think that this happened. Second, we hoped
that we'd set a trend, and that all Ruby books would end up
open-sourced. This didn't happen. In fact, what seemed to happen is
that folks picked up the free version of the PickAxe and used the money
they'd saved to buy one of the other, closed titles.

Well it corresponds with my experiences, not with books but with all
kind of "free beer" things...

It's annoying to see that hard work (and this is what it takes to
write a book) is not honored....

However I feel not guilty because I bought that book. It was my
"step-into" ruby.

I struggled more then once with RIDE which is one of the most unusable
things I happened to use, but just checked ot ArachnoRuby
later and guess what happens Arachno works, but on recommodations Ride
is mentioned over and over again.

So, for the new book, we won't initially be releasing the entire book
for free.

Seems to be a good idea for me.

Regards
Friedrich

 

[Sam Stephenson]

So, for the new book, we won't initially be releasing the entire book
for free. Instead, we'll be contributing to the community in different
ways.

Do you plan to offer an electronic version for sale? The current HTML
version is quite convenient for searching, and I can carry it with me
on my laptop.

Cheers

Dave

Sam

 

[Dave Thomas]

Do you plan to offer an electronic version for sale? The current HTML
version is quite convenient for searching, and I can carry it with me
on my laptop.

We might well offer a PDF version, but that hasn't been confirmed yet.


Cheers

Dave

 

[Roeland Moors]

Folks:

I wanted to announce this now so there's no surprise when the book
comes out (probably in October).

I can't wait to buy it.
My bookcase doesn't have a ruby book yet :-(

 

[Michael Geary]

We might well offer a PDF version, but that hasn't been
confirmed yet.

I don't use paper books at all any more and have little interest in a paper
edition. But I would gladly buy an electronic edition, either PDF or HTML.

-Mike

 

[Aredridel]

I don't use paper books at all any more and have little interest in a paper
edition. But I would gladly buy an electronic edition, either PDF or HTML.

Ditto, tritto. I'd pay for it, for sure, and preferably in HTML -- It
takes one less app to read, and searching is better. Plus I can build my
own indexes easily that way.

Ari

 

[Sean O'Dell]

Ditto, tritto. I'd pay for it, for sure, and preferably in HTML -- It
takes one less app to read, and searching is better. Plus I can build my
own indexes easily that way.

It'd be nice if someone kept the Ruby APIs documented in a
searchable/browsable way, akin to how PHP docs are maintained, but I
personally don't need the entire Pickaxe as PDF/HTML.

Sean O'Dell

 

[Dave Thomas]

It'd be nice if someone kept the Ruby APIs documented in a
searchable/browsable way, akin to how PHP docs are maintained, but I
personally don't need the entire Pickaxe as PDF/HTML.

Ummm.... we have that. I (and some great helpers) added the book's
documentation for all built-in classes and modules to the source a
while back. This means they can be RDoced, and hence viewed using ri
and as HTML. Have a look at http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/rdoc/1.9/


Cheers

Dave


(Gosh, it'd be nice if ruby-doc attributed its contributors... I'm
guessing that I wrote at least 50% of the site's content )

 

[Curt Hibbs]

Folks:

I've been thinking long and hard about the licensing of the new version
of the PickAxe.

[snip]
It's annoying to see that hard work (and this is what it takes to
write a book) is not honored....

However I feel not guilty because I bought that book. It was my
"step-into" ruby.

I struggled more then once with RIDE which is one of the most unusable
things I happened to use, but just checked out ArachnoRuby
later and guess what happens Arachno works, but on recommodations Ride
is mentioned over and over again.

I'm not familiar with RIDE, but I assume you are *not* referring to FreeRIDE
(if I'm wrong please let me know what the problem was).

Curt

 

[Randy Lawrence]

Ummm.... we have that. I (and some great helpers) added the book's
documentation for all built-in classes and modules to the source a while
back. This means they can be RDoced, and hence viewed using ri and as
HTML. Have a look at http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/rdoc/1.9/


Cheers

Dave


(Gosh, it'd be nice if ruby-doc attributed its contributors... I'm
guessing that I wrote at least 50% of the site's content )

Yea, ruby-doc is very nice!

Are there any plans to add support for a searchable version with user
comments?

For example, this doc page for MySQL (searchable with user comments) is
much more helpful because of the user comments below the documentation:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Linux-RPM.html

Thanks and keep up the great work on ruby-doc!

 

[Cameron McBride]

Dave,

First, we wanted to see the Ruby community grow, and we felt that
having the book available would help. We think that this happened.

agreed, and thank you. Even for us "lurkers", we really appreciated it.

open-sourced. This didn't happen. In fact, what seemed to happen is
that folks picked up the free version of the PickAxe and used the money
they'd saved to buy one of the other, closed titles.

well, in my case, the largest motivation for the purchase (Pickaxe being
my 1st ruby book) was due to its public release. Evangelisting ruby was
great when you could point people to a URL of a page you just found
useful.

I wanted to announce this now so there's no surprise when the book
comes out (probably in October).

thanks again, and understandable. but really - with the 1st book still out
there, and updated ri docs in the distro and on ruby-doc.org, I don't really
see any neglect. The 1st pickaxe is still a fine piece of work, and goes
a long way describing the rubyway.

In any case, I'll pick up a copy of #2 (can't wait). Oh, and I think an HTML
version would be fantastic - I'd find it really useful.

Cameron

 

[Michael Geary]

I don't use paper books at all any more and have little interest
in a paper edition. But I would gladly buy an electronic edition,
either PDF or HTML.

I forgot to mention... If it's on http://safari.oreilly.com that would work
for me too. That's where I'm reading The Pragmatic Programmer.

Thanks,

-Mike