D Programming Language Specification ebook

[Jonathan M Davis]

On 2011-07-04 08:32, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 7/4/11 5:58 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> > My biggest concern with publishing a non-free book based on the web site
> > is that the *website changes with every release*!
> > 
> > Who wants to pay $5 every time the compiler is released just so you can
> > have an ebook-style copy of the web data?
> 
> I think that's a good argument.

Yes. Personally, I would be very surprised to see a copy of online 
documentation being sold as an e-book for money. And if you had to pay for it 
again every time that there was an update, it would be that much worse. In the 
case of Pro Git, it seems to me that it's not so much a case of online 
documentation being sold for money but a book being given away for free 
online. And if you'll notice, you can buy a paperback copy of Pro Git, so I 
expect that the thinking that went into selling Pro Git for money was very 
different. It probably ended up with a kindle edition to go with the paperback 
book rather than to extend what was posted online. And most importantly, Pro 
Git is an actual book which was written by one person and probably took a fair 
bit of time and effort to write. It's not online documentation. It's an actual 
book. Really, I think that it's a case of a book being given away for free 
online instead of materials from online being put into a book. I don't think 
that it's comparable to D's online documentation.

I do think that if you have an actual book, it looks bad if it's sold for free 
(e.g. a free kindle copy of TDPL would probably not be a good idea), but I 
also agree with Steven that it looks bad to sell online documentation. I 
really think that it should be free. If someone wants a quality book that they 
have to pay for, then they can buy TDPL. But selling online documentation 
looks just plain bad IMHO, and if we make it clear that the e-book is a copy 
of the online docs, then I don't think that the free factor will cause much in 
the way of problems. If anything, it's the fact that it's online documentation 
instead of an actual book which would cause problems.

- Jonathan M Davis