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I may be too cynical, but I bet that the authors of those books didn't get paid. They were probably marked as "destroyed" in O'Reilly's accounting system.
Even if that was the case, I'll bet both of the authors would have been happy to see their books go into a library. Neither of them are currently available in Carnegie Library (our largest in Pittsburgh).
I've had some concern about the quality of some more recent O'Reilly titles. Nonetheless, I've long felt and continue to feel and hope that their heart is in the right place. I've seen this with authors who work very hard to make their primary mission communication and education, without "sweating the small stuff". And I've seen it at the top, with the way Tim has run and cared about the business. It's worked, with m…
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Even if that was the case, I'll bet both of the authors would have been happy to see their books go into a library. Neither of them are currently available in Carnegie Library (our largest in Pittsburgh).
You're probably right, but it's still wrong to do that without asking permission first.
I may be too cynical, but I bet that the authors of those books didn't get paid. They were probably marked as "destroyed" in O'Reilly's accounting system.
Good point... it's not even clear that donating the book is legal, unless O'Reilly wrote it off as a donation, and paid the royalty.
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Why "used to"? Sounds like a cool place to work
Because they're in the middle of BFE. A beautiful wine country town far, far from everything. [Note, I can't say for sure that's why the above person doesn't work there anymore, but it's likely. I interviewed several times and was astounded that they wanted me to relocate to the middle of nowhere for a 3 month contract.]
While we're praising O'Reilly, I should mention Safari Books Online. I'm sure you've all seen the promotions for the service in any O'Reilly book you purchase. I'm a subscriber, and it's a great service. I get electronic access to almost every book in the O'Reilly library, plus books from a number of other tech publishers, all for a little over $20 a month ($45 if you want to get rid of the 10 books/month limit). It'…
1) I got some promotional mail for a new subscriber deal, and I asked if they could give me that deal too. In response they gave me a better deal and a free month.
2) I used my tokens to download what I thought was the latest edition of a book(2005, pdf only), but discovered a month later that there was a newer one just released(6yrs newer, epub and .mobi formats). I asked if there was anything they could do, and they refunded my tokens so I could get the new one. (They also gave me 200 extra tokens which they removed after I notified them. If it was a smaller qty I would have just assumed they were being nice and kept them, but 200 was pretty clearly an error.)
I was in their "O'Reilly Irregulars" group a few years ago, where folks volunteered to go inventory/catalog the ORA books at their local favorite bookstore, in exchange for a free book or two a month. I also ran banner ads for ORA on a couple of my websites. Marsee and the rest of the crew there are wonderful people to deal with.
I go out of my way to buy ebook versions of their titles directly now even though I could pirate them easily for free.
+1 for O'Reilly Customer Service: when they released The Cathedral and The Bazaar (or was it Free as in Freedom?, can't say for sure), I wrote to them saying that it was funny that a book on free software wasn't itself free to read. They shipped me a free copy and a Python T-shirt (to India). I was in my teens: life-long fan since.