Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

"Please take this down and write your own book."

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 178 posts

Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."

#11

Post by jemfinch »

jasonkester wrote: post #7

This is a good illustration of how tone doesn't come across well in writing. Reading the comment by the original author, it sounded like a friendly request to please take the content down. The guy whose site it was clearly didn't see it that way and responded as though he'd been viscously attacked. He ends up coming across as quite angry, when more likely he was just rattled and feeling defensive. I guess the takeawa…

It's Zed Shaw. That pretty much rules out it being a friendly request ;)

With that said, such situations are exactly the sort that mildly unfriendly requests are appropriate for. I did the same thing when someone took my BSD licensed code, replaced my name in the copyright notice with his own, and put it up on github. Fundamentally, you're not making a request, you're giving a command.

Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."

#12

Post by kenjackson »

jasonkester wrote: post #7

This is a good illustration of how tone doesn't come across well in writing. Reading the comment by the original author, it sounded like a friendly request to please take the content down. The guy whose site it was clearly didn't see it that way and responded as though he'd been viscously attacked. He ends up coming across as quite angry, when more likely he was just rattled and feeling defensive. I guess the takeawa…

The problem with Zed's response, IMO, is the end. Where he says to the guy to have some class and use his own words.

While I completely get what Zed is saying about asking permission. I don't think that "porting" a book is lacking class. It may turn out to be a futile effort, but in many ways I saw it as a tribute and maybe learning exercise. It would be a blast to do SICP in Java. For Java programmers the process of writing, and for others reading such a book would be a valuable experience.

I think if Zed would have just said:

"Hi, my book isn't public domain. You can't modify and redist w/o permission. And unfortunately, I don't think Ruby is the type of language you can just drop in as a replacement for Python. You may get the result to work, but it'll be suboptimal for Ruby and may even make my original text look worse as a result.

Ther eare some people working on a clean room version with Ruby. If you're interested, I'd be happy to make an introduction for you. Again, I'll have to ask you to cease using my text for this project, but hopefully you can create a great Ruby book in some other manner." Or something similar, the result would have been a more civil dialog.

Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."

#13

Post by epo »

jasonkester wrote: post #7

This is a good illustration of how tone doesn't come across well in writing. Reading the comment by the original author, it sounded like a friendly request to please take the content down. The guy whose site it was clearly didn't see it that way and responded as though he'd been viscously attacked. He ends up coming across as quite angry, when more likely he was just rattled and feeling defensive. I guess the takeawa…

Given the circumstances I thought Zed was reasonably civil.

Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."

#15

Post by mcav »

swannodette wrote: post #14
mcknz wrote: post #6

But honestly Zed, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy I just didn't "lift" your whole book and put my name on it!

I hope sarcasm is intended here, if so- that's funny.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1868736

Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."

#18

Post by pmjordan »

mcknz wrote: post #10
jasonkester wrote: post #7

This is a good illustration of how tone doesn't come across well in writing. Reading the comment by the original author, it sounded like a friendly request to please take the content down. The guy whose site it was clearly didn't see it that way and responded as though he'd been viscously attacked. He ends up coming across as quite angry, when more likely he was just rattled and feeling defensive. I guess the takeawa…

"have some class" was probably a little over the top, but I can understand the frustration.

I don't know, would you call copyright infringement a "classy" thing to do?

Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."

#19

Post by crux_ »

Loic wrote: post #9
mathgladiator wrote: post #2

At some level, you have to love zed. He gives and gives to the world, and the world just craps on him. Of course, I have a feeling that his personal brand isn't going to be helped by this exchange.

Zed has principles and follow them. His personal brand (I don't like the term, but I am not a native English speaker and have difficulties to come up with better) is not going to suffer, the opposite. He is just requesting respect for his work and the basic copy rights to be followed. I like people with principles.

I don't like the term either. Reputation is a nice substitute, although it lacks the connotations of treating a person as though they were a corporation-style entity with a marketing department.

... which, come to think of it, is one of the reasons I hate the phrase "personal brand."

Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."

#20

Post by pmjordan »

kenjackson wrote: post #12
jasonkester wrote: post #7

This is a good illustration of how tone doesn't come across well in writing. Reading the comment by the original author, it sounded like a friendly request to please take the content down. The guy whose site it was clearly didn't see it that way and responded as though he'd been viscously attacked. He ends up coming across as quite angry, when more likely he was just rattled and feeling defensive. I guess the takeawa…

The problem with Zed's response, IMO, is the end. Where he says to the guy to have some class and use his own words. While I completely get what Zed is saying about asking permission. I don't think that "porting" a book is lacking class. It may turn out to be a futile effort, but in many ways I saw it as a tribute and maybe learning exercise. It would be a blast to do SICP in Java. For Java programmers the process of…

I doubt that would have helped. Being caught infringing on someone's copyright is embarrassing to say the least. Embarrassment and being given advice, no matter how well-meaning, will often not go down well. In fact, many people get extra annoyed when you're nice about this sort of thing.

I think Zed's initial approach was a close approximation of the best way to handle this. Although I probably would have left it at the original notice and then a mere "thanks for taking it down". (speaking as someone who has no emotional involvement in the situation, anyway. Who knows how I would have reacted to that level of abuse)

Post reply on HN