4 ms·

The entitlement of your post is out of control, and you're making a lot of assumptions in what is really just a knee-jerk reaction to someone, somewhere making

The entitlement of your post is out of control, and you're making a lot of assumptions in what is really just a knee-jerk reaction to someone, somewhere making money. > If anyone wants to get into GNU Make deeply, one would think that the obvious thing to do would be to read the official manual for GNU Make. There is a lot of room for both "user guide" type publications in addition to the official manual. In particular the former may be useful to individuals who have had difficulty learning how to use make from other resources. Are you saying that all of the "Learning Basic Linux" books should be pulled since people can just read the Linux manuals? > and will pay the author [of the manual] (not the writers of the software, mind you) for a nice manual You act as if writing a manual is somehow a less valuable act than writing the software, when in fact high-quality documentation is sorely lacking in almost all parts of the free software world. I doubt you have ever written, edited, and had published a book before, because even for something as "simple" as a guide to a software tool, it is an intense, laborious process that involves lots of research and fact-checking in addition to the actual writing and editing. Its incredibly entitled to suggest that all of this effort should not be compensated at the author's discretion. > Those readers who can afford the new manual will not be incentivised to improve the official manual, since they have the new, better, one. They were never incentivized to improve the official manual in the first place. > reduced funding and reduced help to the original software authors There was no expectation of funding to the original software authors in the first place, and to imply that they deserve the money for what would be spent on this book, a separate creative work, is disingenuous.

teddyh 12y ago
> They were never incentivized to improve the official manual in the first place. On the contrary, if they had read the official manual, they would have had the incentive to improve it. Just like with software. > There was no expectation of funding to the original software authors in the first place Yes there is, if the original software authors are (like in the case of GNU Make) also selling the official manual in book form.
- DrJosiah 12y ago
  Well, jgrahamc did post a link (http://blog.jgc.org/2013/02/updated-list-of-my-gnu-make-articles.html http://blog.jgc.org/2013/02/updated-list-of-my-gnu-make-arti...) to 38 articles that provide free information on GNU Make usage. Reading his post suggests that the new book is a properly edited and formatted edition of the older book with the same content updated to Make 4.0. Copyright law is pretty crappy on the whole, but jgrahamc did write the articles and has been giving them away for free. Why is it unreasonable for him to package, edit, update, and release them years after they were written, with the originals still available for free?
  - teddyh 12y ago
    I do not get the impression that the “The GNU Make Book” has any substantial similarity with the freely available “Ask Mr. Make” articles – I get the impression that the book is a wholly new work, aimed at being a general manual for GNU Make. The title is especially clear in giving me this impression, but also the text describing the book on its home page gives me no reason to doubt my conclusion. Anyway, whatever other good things jgrahamc may have done is immaterial, since I was not only speaking about him, but also about the general case and its consequences. Also, I did not say it was “unreasonable” of anyone to do this. I said that when anyone does something like what jgrahamc did, they take away some unknown amount of human and monetary resources from the authors of the actual software and the official manual, and I don’t think that this drawback is worth it to have a new & improved, but non-freely licenced, manual.

teddyh 12y ago

> They were never incentivized to improve the official manual in the first place. On the contrary, if they had read the official manual, they would have had the incentive to improve it. Just like with software. > There was no expectation of funding to the original software authors in the first place Yes there is, if the original software authors are (like in the case of GNU Make) also selling the official manual in book form.

DrJosiah 12y ago
Well, jgrahamc did post a link (http://blog.jgc.org/2013/02/updated-list-of-my-gnu-make-articles.html http://blog.jgc.org/2013/02/updated-list-of-my-gnu-make-arti...) to 38 articles that provide free information on GNU Make usage. Reading his post suggests that the new book is a properly edited and formatted edition of the older book with the same content updated to Make 4.0. Copyright law is pretty crappy on the whole, but jgrahamc did write the articles and has been giving them away for free. Why is it unreasonable for him to package, edit, update, and release them years after they were written, with the originals still available for free?
- teddyh 12y ago
  I do not get the impression that the “The GNU Make Book” has any substantial similarity with the freely available “Ask Mr. Make” articles – I get the impression that the book is a wholly new work, aimed at being a general manual for GNU Make. The title is especially clear in giving me this impression, but also the text describing the book on its home page gives me no reason to doubt my conclusion. Anyway, whatever other good things jgrahamc may have done is immaterial, since I was not only speaking about him, but also about the general case and its consequences. Also, I did not say it was “unreasonable” of anyone to do this. I said that when anyone does something like what jgrahamc did, they take away some unknown amount of human and monetary resources from the authors of the actual software and the official manual, and I don’t think that this drawback is worth it to have a new & improved, but non-freely licenced, manual.