4 ms·

Aaron Swartz: Announcing the Open Library

19 points by abstractbill 19y ago

euccastro 19y ago
From one of the comments: > Amazon is NOT the place to store information on the world's books! This Brewster Kahle, isn't he still working at Amazon-owned Alexa?
- gojomo 19y ago
  No. Kahle co-founded Alexa in 1996, which was sold to Amazon in 1999. Now, he leads the independent non-profit Internet Archive. - Gordon (who works at the Internet Archive but is speaking only for himself here)
  - Tichy 19y ago
    Amazing - he went from utlra-evil to ultra-saint?
    - aston 19y ago
      Alexa's the app that grabbed pages for the Internet Archive. So he was saintly all along.
      - Tichy 19y ago
        I thought it is the Amazon Spyware, sorry for the confusion.
        jward 19y ago
        It's spyware with an altruistic motive. In Founders at Work the guy touched briefly on the ethics behind it and drawing the line.
nickb 19y ago
Even more competition for Scribd.
gibsonf1 19y ago
"champagne has a disgusting taste" <-- He can't be serious!
- zach 19y ago
  Aaron Swartz, Supertaster.
  - zach 19y ago
    Wot, 0 points? I'm being serious. It's like the one thing I remember from having read his weblog before: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/eatandcode http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/eatandcode
mynameishere 19y ago
The kiss-to-ass ratio on that site is just too, too high. "Hey, everyone, I've come up with a completely banal and already-been-done idea." Oh, mmm, mmm, Aaron you're so smart, mmm...SMAAck Kiss!
- zach 19y ago
  While wishing Aaron all the best, seriously, what the heck? Infogami 2.0 with Scribd's mission statement, yeah, great, super. This was on Daring Fireball, even.
- palish 19y ago
  Just because it has been done before doesn't make it not worth doing. Look at the iPod.
  - mynameishere 19y ago
    True enough. My problem is the oh-you're-such-a-genius vibe I get from the comments there. It's just something I've noticed time and time again throughout my life--people judge based almost entirely on perceived authority, reputation, and past performance. Oddly, it's something that seems to get worse as IQ levels rise. Now, he's smart enough to pay attention to--I won't fault anyone for that--but when he comes up with an idea that was started by PG (project gutenberg) in 1971 (!) it just ain't a work of genius.
staunch 19y ago
The hard part of a project like this is dedicating years to building it into something large. The programming challenges are relatively trivial next to the total work involved. I'll believe he's serious about this project if he sticks with it after most of the fun technical challenges are solved.
gojomo 19y ago
Disclosure: I work at the Internet Archive, but only speak for myself here. I can understand the confusion given the news.yc context, but some of these comments miss the point. The Open Library is a library, not a startup, and is hosted at the nonprofit Internet Archive[1]. It is thus more of an analogue to Wikipedia -- which it complements in the books domain -- than Scribd. Entrepreneurial hackers might be interested in the sweep of its mission: catalog every book ever made, using a combination of preexisting data sources and volunteer contributions, and offer free high-quality downloads of full book contents wherever possible. They might be interested in the detailed UI design doc[2], covering the vision for the project's functionality. They might even be interested in the technology: a new loosely-structured dynamically extensible wiki, with integrated full-text search of both catalog entries and book text -- and all open source[3]. - Gordon [1] http://www.archive.org http://www.archive.org [2] http://demo.openlibrary.org/dev/docs/ui http://demo.openlibrary.org/dev/docs/ui [3] http://demo.openlibrary.org/about/tech http://demo.openlibrary.org/about/tech http://demo.openlibrary.org/about/architecture http://demo.openlibrary.org/about/architecture
- rms 19y ago
  Do you have a plan for making books that are currently copyrighted available for download? Will it be limited to public domain/CC licensed books? Is there any way that I would ever be able to borrow one of the Harry Potter books from your library? Are you focusing on cataloging the information about books or are you focusing on making books available to people?
  - ivankirigin 19y ago
    This is clearly the most important question.
  - gojomo 19y ago
    You should really read the Open Library site for the best idea of what its ambitions include. (Just as I'm not speaking for the Internet Archive, where my project is web archiving, I'm not speaking for the Open Library, either.)
AF 19y ago
I am reminded of similar hyping and grandiose claims that Aaron made when he announced both Infogami and web.py. He eventually abandoned Infogami and the main user of web.py - Reddit, has switched to something else. I really hope he sticks with this. Aaron is a smart guy and it is a shame to see him just leaving behind all these half-finished projects.
- shankys 19y ago
  I didn't know Reddit switched away from web.py. Do you know what they switched to?
  - omouse 19y ago
    Django I think.
- akkartik 19y ago
  Anybody know if infogami went to Conde Nast as well? Nobody's answering their support emails. Ordinarily I would just leave it behind as a lost cause, but one of the sites I created keeps accumulating spam, and I need the brief attention of someone at the server to take care of it. The thought of junk accumulating on permalinks I created makes me feel dirty..
  - rms 19y ago
    Infogami (Aaron Swartz) merged with reddit and became reddit. You can try emailing Aaron Swartz but I'm not sure if he is interested in maintaining infogami. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/interruptdriven http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/interruptdriven
- daltonlp 19y ago
  When did reddit switch? I wasn't able to find any reference to that. As of January 2007, it was still web.py: http://reddit.com/info/vovg/comments http://reddit.com/info/vovg/comments

19 points by abstractbill 19y ago

From one of the comments: > Amazon is NOT the place to store information on the world's books! This Brewster Kahle, isn't he still working at Amazon-owned Alexa?

gojomo 19y ago
No. Kahle co-founded Alexa in 1996, which was sold to Amazon in 1999. Now, he leads the independent non-profit Internet Archive. - Gordon (who works at the Internet Archive but is speaking only for himself here)
- Tichy 19y ago
  Amazing - he went from utlra-evil to ultra-saint?
  - aston 19y ago
    Alexa's the app that grabbed pages for the Internet Archive. So he was saintly all along.
    - Tichy 19y ago
      I thought it is the Amazon Spyware, sorry for the confusion.
      - jward 19y ago
        It's spyware with an altruistic motive. In Founders at Work the guy touched briefly on the ethics behind it and drawing the line.

nickb 19y ago

Even more competition for Scribd.

gibsonf1 19y ago

"champagne has a disgusting taste" <-- He can't be serious!

zach 19y ago
Aaron Swartz, Supertaster.
- zach 19y ago
  Wot, 0 points? I'm being serious. It's like the one thing I remember from having read his weblog before: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/eatandcode http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/eatandcode

mynameishere 19y ago

The kiss-to-ass ratio on that site is just too, too high. "Hey, everyone, I've come up with a completely banal and already-been-done idea." Oh, mmm, mmm, Aaron you're so smart, mmm...SMAAck Kiss!

zach 19y ago
While wishing Aaron all the best, seriously, what the heck? Infogami 2.0 with Scribd's mission statement, yeah, great, super. This was on Daring Fireball, even.
palish 19y ago
Just because it has been done before doesn't make it not worth doing. Look at the iPod.
- mynameishere 19y ago
  True enough. My problem is the oh-you're-such-a-genius vibe I get from the comments there. It's just something I've noticed time and time again throughout my life--people judge based almost entirely on perceived authority, reputation, and past performance. Oddly, it's something that seems to get worse as IQ levels rise. Now, he's smart enough to pay attention to--I won't fault anyone for that--but when he comes up with an idea that was started by PG (project gutenberg) in 1971 (!) it just ain't a work of genius.

staunch 19y ago

The hard part of a project like this is dedicating years to building it into something large. The programming challenges are relatively trivial next to the total work involved. I'll believe he's serious about this project if he sticks with it after most of the fun technical challenges are solved.

gojomo 19y ago

Disclosure: I work at the Internet Archive, but only speak for myself here. I can understand the confusion given the news.yc context, but some of these comments miss the point. The Open Library is a library, not a startup, and is hosted at the nonprofit Internet Archive[1]. It is thus more of an analogue to Wikipedia -- which it complements in the books domain -- than Scribd. Entrepreneurial hackers might be interested in the sweep of its mission: catalog every book ever made, using a combination of preexisting data sources and volunteer contributions, and offer free high-quality downloads of full book contents wherever possible. They might be interested in the detailed UI design doc[2], covering the vision for the project's functionality. They might even be interested in the technology: a new loosely-structured dynamically extensible wiki, with integrated full-text search of both catalog entries and book text -- and all open source[3]. - Gordon [1] http://www.archive.org http://www.archive.org [2] http://demo.openlibrary.org/dev/docs/ui http://demo.openlibrary.org/dev/docs/ui [3] http://demo.openlibrary.org/about/tech http://demo.openlibrary.org/about/tech http://demo.openlibrary.org/about/architecture http://demo.openlibrary.org/about/architecture

rms 19y ago
Do you have a plan for making books that are currently copyrighted available for download? Will it be limited to public domain/CC licensed books? Is there any way that I would ever be able to borrow one of the Harry Potter books from your library? Are you focusing on cataloging the information about books or are you focusing on making books available to people?
- ivankirigin 19y ago
  This is clearly the most important question.
- gojomo 19y ago
  You should really read the Open Library site for the best idea of what its ambitions include. (Just as I'm not speaking for the Internet Archive, where my project is web archiving, I'm not speaking for the Open Library, either.)

AF 19y ago

I am reminded of similar hyping and grandiose claims that Aaron made when he announced both Infogami and web.py. He eventually abandoned Infogami and the main user of web.py - Reddit, has switched to something else. I really hope he sticks with this. Aaron is a smart guy and it is a shame to see him just leaving behind all these half-finished projects.

shankys 19y ago
I didn't know Reddit switched away from web.py. Do you know what they switched to?
- omouse 19y ago
  Django I think.
akkartik 19y ago
Anybody know if infogami went to Conde Nast as well? Nobody's answering their support emails. Ordinarily I would just leave it behind as a lost cause, but one of the sites I created keeps accumulating spam, and I need the brief attention of someone at the server to take care of it. The thought of junk accumulating on permalinks I created makes me feel dirty..
- rms 19y ago
  Infogami (Aaron Swartz) merged with reddit and became reddit. You can try emailing Aaron Swartz but I'm not sure if he is interested in maintaining infogami. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/interruptdriven http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/interruptdriven
daltonlp 19y ago
When did reddit switch? I wasn't able to find any reference to that. As of January 2007, it was still web.py: http://reddit.com/info/vovg/comments http://reddit.com/info/vovg/comments