Here on HN we're all hackers who like to roll up our sleeves I think you're very right about this, but there's even more to it. When O'Reilly started, getting

Here on HN we're all hackers who like to roll up our sleeves I think you're very right about this, but there's even more to it. When O'Reilly started, getting a book published was like getting a chip design fabricated. You had professionals who worked with software that cost thousands of dollars producing "camera ready" pages for printers, whose enormously expensive equipment required very special formats. And the end product had to go through a channel as a physical product being moved to tens of thousands of bookstores, because those incredibly fragmented physical sales locations were almost the only places books were sold. It just didn't matter how much of a "roll up your sleeves" guy you were in that world (which I remember like it was yesterday.) But that world is gone. These days, you can create your book entirely with free software as you sit on a beach, and you can sell it in electronic form off your own website to the entire planet (without leaving the beach.) You can do all the marketing, all the selling, collect your paychecks, and use them to buy stuff, all from that little spot in the sand. O'Reilly is still needed by some, but for "roll up your sleeves hackers", I think their time has past.