6 ms·

Free O'Reilly Books

136 points by Cieplak 14y ago

hayksaakian 14y ago
Does HN have any good picks from this list? I see a lot of out of print books and books not about programming/software development, so if there are any that someone could recommend from this massive list I'd appreciate that.
- rmason 14y ago
  Definitely 'the cathedral and the bazaar' which is imho a classic.
- koralatov 14y ago
  A lot of the stuff in it is out of date, but `Unix Text Processing' is a great read, if only to get a feel for the concepts and ideas.
  - D9u 14y ago
    That title caught my eye also. Not much difference between Unix text processing then, and now.
- progrock 14y ago
  The Cathedral and the Bizaar and the Open Sources books, give a nice historical background. The Open Sources book have many nice essays from different contributors. I particulary enjoyed reading about the history of Unix transforming into a free OS, and Larry Wall's onion analogy.
hkmurakami 14y ago
>Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/index.html http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/index.html I'm familiar with the general gist of the FSF's philosophies but I had never really sat down and read an in-depth write up of the importance of Free Software, so I'm looking forward to reading this :)
- AndreasFrom 14y ago
  I found it good and think you can look forward to reading it.
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    Thanks! Just finished reading the first chapter and I found it to be surprisingly well written.
SkittlesNTwix 14y ago
Many of these books are out-of-print for a reason - they're not really relevant in todays tech landscape. There's a few gems in here though.
- dogweather 14y ago
  And those are...?
  - jlarocco 14y ago
    My choices for the "good" ones are: The PNG book: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/book/toc.html http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/book/toc.html The GNU Make book: http://oreilly.com/openbook/make3/book/index.csp http://oreilly.com/openbook/make3/book/index.csp The Subversion book: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/ http://svnbook.red-bean.com/ The Cathedral and the Bazaar: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ And I haven't read it, but I would guess "Making TeX Work" is still relevant: http://makingtexwork.sourceforge.net/mtw/ http://makingtexwork.sourceforge.net/mtw/
dfc 14y ago
The list of out of print books is twice as long as those still in print.
jjacobson 14y ago
Oh man, a book on Mason! That takes me back to some good old Perl days.
olefoo 14y ago
Managing Projects with Make 3rd edition http://oreilly.com/openbook/make3/book/index.csp http://oreilly.com/openbook/make3/book/index.csp This is the definitive reference to the software that lifts you from writing software to building software systems. See also http://bost.ocks.org/mike/make/ http://bost.ocks.org/mike/make/ for why it's still a useful book, 27 years after the first edition. Compare that to most of the technical books you own; most of which were hopelessly obsolete by the ripe age of 27 months.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  Actually I find it quite sad. It means many developers are doing software in 2013 as if their main system was a System V one, stuck in 1977.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - olefoo 14y ago
    Not quite, a linux system of ~2010 has several advances over a Unix system/V from the late 1970's it's a late 1960s muscle car compared to the Model A of PDP-11. Same basic technology under the hood, but refined and much better understood. Most of the "advanced" programming environments look very nice but fail to meet the needs of real world usage; where you have to talk to other systems and get dirty doing it.
- danieldk 14y ago
  If you are writing C or C++ software, please use something like CMake. Not everyone is using GNU, the same compiler, or the same editor/IDE. At the very least CMake can create GNU make files, Visual C++'s nmake files, Visual Studio projects and Xcode projects.
bravura 14y ago
There is also Learning JavaScript Design Patterns. It's an O'Reilly book, and it's under creative commons, but it's not on that list. You can find it here: http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/ http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/bo...
zimpenfish 14y ago
Grief, I had dead tree versions of the XView books back in 1993. Back when dealing with X was Proper Work. None of this GNOME bullshit.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  Yeah - doing X work was "my job" for a few years in the early nineties. The various O'Reilly XLib/Xt books were a godsend. Still have 'em somewhere in the garage.
  - prakashk 14y ago
    I also have a few of those sitting in boxes in my garage. Every time I do some cleaning-up, I debate (just for a second!) whether I should dispose of them, but end up keeping them.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  And the amount of X calls matched Win32 to do anything proper.
jasongaya 14y ago
Good
prostoalex 14y ago
Open Feedback Publishing System from O'Reilly is another source http://ofps.oreilly.com/ http://ofps.oreilly.com/
progrock 14y ago
I was excited to find one book as html broken into chapters, but the others are in various formats - there isn't much consistancy - which makes it difficult to read them, or write my own glue code - to get them onto my e-reader.
DigitalJack 14y ago
It says that Archive.org is producing pdfs of these books, but I'm not having any luck finding the Managing Projects with Make as a pdf. Anyone else see it? EDIT: I misunderstood, it's at archive.org's openlibrary project: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL3823216W/Managing_projects_with_Make http://openlibrary.org/works/OL3823216W/Managing_projects_wi...
xradionut 14y ago
I'm surprised that there isn't any Fortran guides or manuals on how to maintain VT100 terminals on the list.
- wslh 14y ago
  :-)
- wglb 14y ago
  Just checked, they don't have no TECO manuals.
brudgers 14y ago
I bought The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog in early 1994. I had an account at NERDC, a 9600 baud Intel modem, and connection time was $0.01/minute. One month my bill was over $20.00. That's a lot of Gopher and Usenet.
bstpierre 14y ago
> Through its Open Library project, the Internet Archive is scanning and hosting PDF versions of our open books. scanning?? I would have thought that O'Reilly could give text/source to the Internet Archive that could be massaged into a better quality output product. (And allow formats other than just PDF -- text/epub/mobi/etc.)
- bluedino 14y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the originals are lost.
Aloha 14y ago
I've found Unix Text Processing (http://oreilly.com/openbook/utp/ http://oreilly.com/openbook/utp/) to be very very helpful when trying to some data processing I would normally do in excel.

136 points by Cieplak 14y ago

Does HN have any good picks from this list? I see a lot of out of print books and books not about programming/software development, so if there are any that someone could recommend from this massive list I'd appreciate that.

rmason 14y ago
Definitely 'the cathedral and the bazaar' which is imho a classic.
koralatov 14y ago
A lot of the stuff in it is out of date, but `Unix Text Processing' is a great read, if only to get a feel for the concepts and ideas.
- D9u 14y ago
  That title caught my eye also. Not much difference between Unix text processing then, and now.
progrock 14y ago
The Cathedral and the Bizaar and the Open Sources books, give a nice historical background. The Open Sources book have many nice essays from different contributors. I particulary enjoyed reading about the history of Unix transforming into a free OS, and Larry Wall's onion analogy.

hkmurakami 14y ago

>Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/index.html http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/index.html I'm familiar with the general gist of the FSF's philosophies but I had never really sat down and read an in-depth write up of the importance of Free Software, so I'm looking forward to reading this :)

AndreasFrom 14y ago
I found it good and think you can look forward to reading it.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  Thanks! Just finished reading the first chapter and I found it to be surprisingly well written.

SkittlesNTwix 14y ago

Many of these books are out-of-print for a reason - they're not really relevant in todays tech landscape. There's a few gems in here though.

dogweather 14y ago
And those are...?
- jlarocco 14y ago
  My choices for the "good" ones are: The PNG book: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/book/toc.html http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/book/toc.html The GNU Make book: http://oreilly.com/openbook/make3/book/index.csp http://oreilly.com/openbook/make3/book/index.csp The Subversion book: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/ http://svnbook.red-bean.com/ The Cathedral and the Bazaar: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ And I haven't read it, but I would guess "Making TeX Work" is still relevant: http://makingtexwork.sourceforge.net/mtw/ http://makingtexwork.sourceforge.net/mtw/

dfc 14y ago

The list of out of print books is twice as long as those still in print.

jjacobson 14y ago

Oh man, a book on Mason! That takes me back to some good old Perl days.

olefoo 14y ago

Managing Projects with Make 3rd edition http://oreilly.com/openbook/make3/book/index.csp http://oreilly.com/openbook/make3/book/index.csp This is the definitive reference to the software that lifts you from writing software to building software systems. See also http://bost.ocks.org/mike/make/ http://bost.ocks.org/mike/make/ for why it's still a useful book, 27 years after the first edition. Compare that to most of the technical books you own; most of which were hopelessly obsolete by the ripe age of 27 months.

pjmlp 14y ago
Actually I find it quite sad. It means many developers are doing software in 2013 as if their main system was a System V one, stuck in 1977.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- olefoo 14y ago
  Not quite, a linux system of ~2010 has several advances over a Unix system/V from the late 1970's it's a late 1960s muscle car compared to the Model A of PDP-11. Same basic technology under the hood, but refined and much better understood. Most of the "advanced" programming environments look very nice but fail to meet the needs of real world usage; where you have to talk to other systems and get dirty doing it.
danieldk 14y ago
If you are writing C or C++ software, please use something like CMake. Not everyone is using GNU, the same compiler, or the same editor/IDE. At the very least CMake can create GNU make files, Visual C++'s nmake files, Visual Studio projects and Xcode projects.

bravura 14y ago

There is also Learning JavaScript Design Patterns. It's an O'Reilly book, and it's under creative commons, but it's not on that list. You can find it here: http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/ http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/bo...

zimpenfish 14y ago

Grief, I had dead tree versions of the XView books back in 1993. Back when dealing with X was Proper Work. None of this GNOME bullshit.

adrianhoward 14y ago
Yeah - doing X work was "my job" for a few years in the early nineties. The various O'Reilly XLib/Xt books were a godsend. Still have 'em somewhere in the garage.
- prakashk 14y ago
  I also have a few of those sitting in boxes in my garage. Every time I do some cleaning-up, I debate (just for a second!) whether I should dispose of them, but end up keeping them.
pjmlp 14y ago
And the amount of X calls matched Win32 to do anything proper.

jasongaya 14y ago

Good

prostoalex 14y ago

Open Feedback Publishing System from O'Reilly is another source http://ofps.oreilly.com/ http://ofps.oreilly.com/

progrock 14y ago

I was excited to find one book as html broken into chapters, but the others are in various formats - there isn't much consistancy - which makes it difficult to read them, or write my own glue code - to get them onto my e-reader.

DigitalJack 14y ago

It says that Archive.org is producing pdfs of these books, but I'm not having any luck finding the Managing Projects with Make as a pdf. Anyone else see it? EDIT: I misunderstood, it's at archive.org's openlibrary project: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL3823216W/Managing_projects_with_Make http://openlibrary.org/works/OL3823216W/Managing_projects_wi...

xradionut 14y ago

I'm surprised that there isn't any Fortran guides or manuals on how to maintain VT100 terminals on the list.

wslh 14y ago
:-)
wglb 14y ago
Just checked, they don't have no TECO manuals.

brudgers 14y ago

I bought The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog in early 1994. I had an account at NERDC, a 9600 baud Intel modem, and connection time was $0.01/minute. One month my bill was over $20.00. That's a lot of Gopher and Usenet.

bstpierre 14y ago

> Through its Open Library project, the Internet Archive is scanning and hosting PDF versions of our open books. scanning?? I would have thought that O'Reilly could give text/source to the Internet Archive that could be massaged into a better quality output product. (And allow formats other than just PDF -- text/epub/mobi/etc.)

bluedino 14y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the originals are lost.

Aloha 14y ago

I've found Unix Text Processing (http://oreilly.com/openbook/utp/ http://oreilly.com/openbook/utp/) to be very very helpful when trying to some data processing I would normally do in excel.