More important people (author, publisher) have commented on this already, so this is nothing but a very humble additional opinion here: I think you have the be

More important people (author, publisher) have commented on this already, so this is nothing but a very humble additional opinion here: I think you have the best reason to take the author up on his offer. You cannot purchase it. He offers you a way to get it for free. That's a good match. For me, I came to that site lead by the title. I like raganwald's contribution here and expected something like a free 'Learn Python the hard way' style thing. Or a blog-articles-in-pdf. With maybe little (publishing!) effort and just a heads-up for the people here.[1] Seeing that it is actually a book in progress I left. I cannot pay for purely technical reasons (No credit card, this country doesn't want to give me one and my home country revoked mine when they didn't see any incoming salary for roughly a year). But I earn a pretty damn good salary here and got money in the bank. So _I_ would need to feel guilty for free-loading if I just grabbed the book. You really shouldn't. And good luck anyway. Edit: 1: Actually, after rereading raganwald's comment I think that is pretty much correct. But the site says 'Note: You are buying an Alpha Book. New essays will be added on a regular basis, and you will receive updates for free.' so I don't understand how this 'sunk costs' works in this case?