A conversation on Ask Bjørn Hansen's blog (famous for being an administrator of perl.org and involved in other Perl-related projects) prompted me to write this essay, which talks about why it is unwise and harmful not to make one's books publically available online. Perl is mentioned there and so is Ruby and git and other technologies.
Comment here or on the announcement of the essay on my homepage's blog, where no registration is required for commenting.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
What I can't get behind is the notion that it is acceptable to illegally share information against the author's and publisher's legal rights. It doesn't matter if you think it is a bad idea for them to close source their work, it is their prerogative and it should be respected - both morally and legally. Trying to make it all right by claiming it is for non-commercial use is NOT all right.
In closing, I agree that more people would benefit if books didn't cost anything and that it would still be possible for an author to make money and that the quality of the material would likely go up if it were available for collaboration and that more people should want to share their knowledge without restriction. I also think that you are insane that if you feel it is ok to violate someone's legal rights because you think it is a bad idea. I think the number of books written would plummet if there were no laws protecting their non-commercial distribution.
Since this seems to be a common theme for you, I wonder what your reaction would be to an essay someone wrote where they made a very good point for violating your legal rights (something important to you).
Without financial compensation, you wouldn't have Learning Perl (5 editions), Learning Perl on Win32, Randal Schwartz's Perls of Wisdom, Intermediate Perl (2 editions), Mastering Perl, or the Learning Perl Student Workbook.. You wouldn't have The Perl Journal, The Perl Review, or $foo without having to pay for them.
Since you've never written a book, you don't have anything interesting to say about what book authors should do. You've never been a publisher, either, so you don't have anything interesting to say there. When you have to spend a 18 months working on a book or spend capital to publish something, then we can talk about your notion of free.
If you want free books online, starting typing. Let us know when you have them ready.
