From kragen@dnaco.net Sat Jul 11 05:53:35 1998 Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 05:53:34 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: "Bradley M. Kuhn" cc: clug-user@clug.org Subject: Re: O'Reilly - just say no (was Re: [Fwd: O'Reilly WebMaster Contest]) In-Reply-To: <19980710204011.10007@ebb.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Keywords: X-UID: 450 Status: O X-Status: On Fri, 10 Jul 1998, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > I would, however, encourage everyone to continue using O'Reilly books that > they have *already bought*. If the money is already in O'Reilly's hands, no > sense on getting the most out of the thing. I disagree. If you think O'Reilly is evil, you should stop using their books as soon as possible. This is because every time you refer to your O'Reilly book, you benefit O'Reilly as well as yourself. Why? - Well, you aren't buying any competing books, thus starving their competitors. (Set aside for the moment that there aren't any competing books.) - You aren't evaluating any competing books; the next time someone asks you what book to get on DNS and BIND, you're still going to have to direct them either to the Grasshopper Book, or to some book you haven't ever read that is probably garbage. - You aren't developing any familiarity with competing books. This means that you're going to be awfully tempted to use the next edition of the O'Reilly book, instead of some competitor that may emerge. Also, if someone asks you a question about Sendmail, and you reach for the Bat Book, they will see that and interpret it as a recommendation. I use these same arguments to convince people that open-source software is better than illegally-copied proprietary software. The proprietary software company develops market dominance through users it didn't have to pay anything to support. I like O'Reilly. I think they're doing good things for the community politically, and I think their books are a genuine service to the community in themselves. I think copyright law is a terrible fit for software, but a fairly good one (still) for books. Kragen