On Sat, 22 Dec 2001 12:38:55 GMT, "Hal E. Fulton"
<hal9000 / hypermetrics.com> wrote:

>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: <Le Wang>
>Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
>To: ruby-talk ML <ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org>; <undisclosed-recipients: ;>
>Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2001 12:55 AM
>Subject: [ruby-talk:29295] Re: Programming Ruby
>
>
>> On Fri, 21 Dec 2001 02:01:56 GMT, Brian Wisti <brian / coolnamehere.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> >
>> >> > Dave (sighing as he watches sales of the book plummet)
>> >> > 
>
>[snip]
>
>> 
>> Guys, I think Dave was kidding.
>
>My guess is, I think he wishes he was kidding
>even more than he was.
>
>It's hard to say whether open-sourcing in the
>long run helped or hurt sales.

It's simple really.  If you put forth a ton of effort and make a
*quality* book, open-sourcing (if we can call it that) will help sales
in the long run.  If not, well, your book will get a ton of
(constructive) criticism and no sales.  I think the last point is why
we don't see people open-source often.

I would site "Programming Ruby" and "Thinking in Java 2 ed." as
examples.  I usually try to stay from technical reference books, since
they get out of date /very/ fast and all the info is on the web any
how, all be it scattered.  However, I bought these books after
"previewing" them online.

And I must say I'm very happy to be supporting the proliferation and
continuation of *quality* books.  In this case, especially in light of
all that Dave and Andy have done for the Ruby community.


cheers
-lw

>
>It definitely helped the Ruby community, though.
>
>Hal
>