"Please take this down and write your own book." • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by jwhitlark » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 7:44 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #27

charlief wrote: post #5

This was originally posted by martinemde looking for support and then flagged down here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1873881

"I messaged you on Twitter and contacted you by email to try to give you knowledge of it. I was quite public about doing it as a _why day project. I made a good faith effort to let you know what I was working on. I even knew you were working on having a learn code the hard way thing and I wanted to contribute but there's no clear outline of your goals or how you expect people to contribute. This is my understanding o…

"You didn't respond to me" does not lead to "I can do what I want with material you post". Good faith means honoring people's wishes until they tell you otherwise.

Aside: Normally I look for something like O'Reilly's statement "This book is to help you get your job done." The code is gone, so I can't tell where this would fall on the reasonableness continuum.

Aside Aside: Zed's a nice guy in person; I'd guess the harsh online stuff is a tool to get things done. Linus doesn't have a rep. for being nice online, and perhaps that's how some guys put out so much code.

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

#52

Post by ddemchuk » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 7:45 PM UTC

Why do people take the time to digitally bicker with veteran trolls? We're all professionals, this isn't something you want your name attached to on the "nothing is ever forgotten" internet.

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

#53

Post by FraaJad » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 7:45 PM UTC

jpcx01 wrote: post #41

Someone, please tell me where there is a copyright notice anywhere on http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ or on the PDF http://learnpythonthehardway.org/static/LearnPythonTheHardWa... If he's so fanatical about copyright, why can't he post something about it? The culture developers are used to on github is forking people's work and tweaking it (while still giving attribution to the author). It's not totally shocking th…

Before you attack someone's name you should do your homework.

1. he has his name on the book. That is sufficient to claim copyright. There is no need for additional copyright notices.

2. The source to the book was not on github. The martinemde guy put up the code on github. The original source lives in a fossil repository.

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

#54

Post by johnny22 » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 7:46 PM UTC

jpcx01 wrote: post #41

Someone, please tell me where there is a copyright notice anywhere on http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ or on the PDF http://learnpythonthehardway.org/static/LearnPythonTheHardWa... If he's so fanatical about copyright, why can't he post something about it? The culture developers are used to on github is forking people's work and tweaking it (while still giving attribution to the author). It's not totally shocking th…

copyright is implicit in many places isn't it?

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

#55

Post by mdonahoe » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 7:48 PM UTC

Interesting. On the page about the book[1], Zed also links to How To Think Like a Computer Scientist, another popular book for learning Python.

Allen Downey was the first author on that book, but initially he wrote it in Java:

"I released the book under the GNU Free Documentation License, which allows users to copy, modify, and distribute the book.

What happened next is the cool part. Jeff Elkner, a high school teacher in Virginia, adopted my book and translated it into Python. He sent me a copy of his translation, and I had the unusual experience of learning Python by reading my own book."[2]

It's funny that the same thing is happening here, but Zed has a very different reaction than Allen's.

[1]: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index [2]: http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/book001.html

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

#56

Post by steveklabnik » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 7:51 PM UTC

The "good riddance" posts really sadden me. I've generally found the Ruby community to be a great place, and then comments like these come along...

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

#57

Post by aconbere » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 7:53 PM UTC

jpcx01 wrote: post #41

Someone, please tell me where there is a copyright notice anywhere on http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ or on the PDF http://learnpythonthehardway.org/static/LearnPythonTheHardWa... If he's so fanatical about copyright, why can't he post something about it? The culture developers are used to on github is forking people's work and tweaking it (while still giving attribution to the author). It's not totally shocking th…

page 4 of the pdf: "This book is Copyright (C) 2010 by Zed A. Shaw. You are free to distribute this book to anyone you want, so long as you do not charge anything for it, and it is not altered. You must give away the book in its entirety, or not at all"

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

#58

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 7:53 PM UTC

jpcx01 wrote: post #41

Someone, please tell me where there is a copyright notice anywhere on http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ or on the PDF http://learnpythonthehardway.org/static/LearnPythonTheHardWa... If he's so fanatical about copyright, why can't he post something about it? The culture developers are used to on github is forking people's work and tweaking it (while still giving attribution to the author). It's not totally shocking th…

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by JshWright » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 7:54 PM UTC

mdonahoe wrote: post #55

Interesting. On the page about the book[1], Zed also links to How To Think Like a Computer Scientist, another popular book for learning Python. Allen Downey was the first author on that book, but initially he wrote it in Java: "I released the book under the GNU Free Documentation License, which allows users to copy, modify, and distribute the book. What happened next is the cool part. Jeff Elkner, a high school teach…

It would only be "the same thing" if Zed chose to release his content under the GNU Free Documentation License, which he did not.

It's his content, and he can do with it what he choses. If he doesn't want folks to "copy, modify, and distribute" his content, that's fine with me (not that it matters, since it's _his_ content).

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

#60

Post by gcampbell » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 7:55 PM UTC

jpcx01 wrote: post #41

Someone, please tell me where there is a copyright notice anywhere on http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ or on the PDF http://learnpythonthehardway.org/static/LearnPythonTheHardWa... If he's so fanatical about copyright, why can't he post something about it? The culture developers are used to on github is forking people's work and tweaking it (while still giving attribution to the author). It's not totally shocking th…

The License is located at the bottom of page 4:

"This book is Copyright (C) 2010 by Zed A. Shaw. You are free to distribute this book to anyone you want, so long as you do not charge anything for it, and it is not altered. You must give away the book in its entirety, or not at all."

In Creative Commons terms, it's basically cc by-nc-nd: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/