D Programming Language Specification ebook

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Mon, 04 Jul 2011 15:22:22 -0400, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:

> On 7/4/2011 3:40 AM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> On 2011-07-04 03:24, bearophile wrote:
>>> Maybe older people equate free with "bad", but newer generations are  
>>> used
>>> to find good content for free on Internet. Is D designed for older  
>>> people,
>>> people used to C and C++, that hate JavaScript?
>>
>> There's a difference between free on the internet and a free book.
>
> Exactly. It may not make rational sense, but it's true.
>
> Free books are regarded today like free software was 20 years ago - it  
> must be crap.

Free books does not mean free eBooks.  A free book takes money to create  
every copy, so it can be assumed that if it's free, they are making their  
money some other way (i.e. they are selling you something indirectly).   
But a free eBook does not require money per copy to produce, so its  
quality cannot be judged based on the price (either way, check out  
alphascript publishing).

Considering your target audience, I think it is a very large stretch to  
think they don't understand this concept.

Besides, why can't the book's description say "Copy of the D online  
documentation in kindle format"?  How can anyone "judge" that to be crap?   
This whole argument boggles my mind, there are no non-greed related  
reasons to charge money for this book.

How about this, if you charge any amount of money more than 0, I guarantee  
you will have less than 10% of the downloads than if you gave it away for  
free.  Plus you will alienate people who think they bought an actual D  
book (or worse, think they are getting a deal on Andrei's book) and feel  
like chumps.  That should be great for D's image :P  Iliekcakes will have  
a field day on reddit...

-Steve