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Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

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Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#71

Post by karambahh »

razeh wrote: post #70

I meet Greg when I was an undergraduate at Syracuse University and he was earning his PhD. I helped out a bit with some of the graphics programming for his thesis. Greg was a class act, always patient and kind. It was super helpful to me when I went to UIUC for graduate schools and he showed up as a faculty member there; he knew how to get access to campus resources and was more willing to help me than faculty in my…

Met him at HAL 2001, volunteered together a bit there. I think he was heading the speakers herald team I was part of. First encounter with the hacker conference scene, he guided me wisely.

Patient and kind indeed.

He's the reason I kept going around European hacking / free software events. I owe him cultural discoveries, long lasting friendships and tech partnerships. Very saddened by this news.

So far the thread is full of similar interactions with him.

That person changed so many lives, by his contributions to culture and technology but more importantly (?) because he had tremendous impacts on the lives of many people he took time to interact with.

I know that these threads are always full of "this recently deceased people made the world a better place". I lived with him 4 days 24 years ago so I can't say I knew him...but I know I wouldn't be writing this about more "famous" people I interacted with.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#72

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

acabal wrote: post #50

I'm shocked and saddened to hear this. Greg was a deep source of knowledge and support as I started and shepherded Standard Ebooks. He was generous with his time and experience, and unbelievably patient with me, some guy he had never heard of or met before who was just another cold-email in what must have been an endless stream in his inbox. We should all aspire to his high spirit of camaraderie, charity, and kindnes…

Why are there no unique numbers assigned to Standard Ebook's ebooks? I understand that there is a cost associated with ISBNs, but it's very irritating to not have something that identifies them uniquely. Most (all?) aren't even in Worldcat, so I can't use OCLC numbers for that purpose either.

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#73

Post by testdelacc1 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #72
acabal wrote: post #50

I'm shocked and saddened to hear this. Greg was a deep source of knowledge and support as I started and shepherded Standard Ebooks. He was generous with his time and experience, and unbelievably patient with me, some guy he had never heard of or met before who was just another cold-email in what must have been an endless stream in his inbox. We should all aspire to his high spirit of camaraderie, charity, and kindnes…

Why are there no unique numbers assigned to Standard Ebook's ebooks? I understand that there is a cost associated with ISBNs, but it's very irritating to not have something that identifies them uniquely. Most (all?) aren't even in Worldcat, so I can't use OCLC numbers for that purpose either.

> very irritating

I think it’s possible to express this in a less caustic way. Because Standard E-books is high quality and free of charge right?

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#75

Post by ipaddr »

kragen wrote: post #34
zozbot234 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While new works do trickle into the public domain every year, it's worth noting that copyright status is not currently the main bottleneck to public domain cultural works being made widely available to the public under F.A.I.R. (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. There's a huge amount of extant literature and music in the public domain that someone has scanned and perhaps put up online as raw…

That's true, but its framing sort of rests on an assumption of fungibility that doesn't really hold. There are many important cultural works whose copyright status is currently the main bottleneck to their being made widely available to the public. Part of why this happens is that, in any medium, most works aren't very popular. A few years ago, someone who worked at YouTube told me that more than half of YouTube vide…

I find the no views on half of youtube videos to be difficult to accept unless counting non-public. If we filtered for a 5 seconds + perhaps that would fix that.

I would if youtube would prune anything without a view in the future.

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#76

Post by contact9879 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #72
acabal wrote: post #50

I'm shocked and saddened to hear this. Greg was a deep source of knowledge and support as I started and shepherded Standard Ebooks. He was generous with his time and experience, and unbelievably patient with me, some guy he had never heard of or met before who was just another cold-email in what must have been an endless stream in his inbox. We should all aspire to his high spirit of camaraderie, charity, and kindnes…

Why are there no unique numbers assigned to Standard Ebook's ebooks? I understand that there is a cost associated with ISBNs, but it's very irritating to not have something that identifies them uniquely. Most (all?) aren't even in Worldcat, so I can't use OCLC numbers for that purpose either.

the ebook identifier uniquely identifies every ebook. standard ebook ebooks use the url as their unique identifier

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#77

Post by chucksmash »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #65
kragen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't that abstruse 15 years ago. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/kanye-interrupts-imma-let-you... The difference, in my view, is that Taylor Swift wasn't being incorrectly given credit for Beyoncé's video.

ok yeah I knew the reference I just wasn't getting how they thought it applied here.

At one point this morning, this thread was about 50% posts by someone repeatedly pointing out that it wasn't the founder of Project Gutenberg who had passed away and being maybe a little precious about writing their dates with a leading zero.

Imo, it was a valid criticism.

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#78

Post by dinkelberg »

walkabout wrote: post #63
rom1v wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the years intended to be read in octal?

They’re intended to derail every thread that includes them into discussions about this stupid date format, thus wasting lifetimes of person-hours. It’s surely an effort by misanthropes who want the worst for humanity. If it’s coming from any benign motivation, then it’s totally misguided.

I'm sorry, but this reads somewhat misanthropical itself. Let people have some fun?

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#79

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

contact9879 wrote: post #76
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are there no unique numbers assigned to Standard Ebook's ebooks? I understand that there is a cost associated with ISBNs, but it's very irritating to not have something that identifies them uniquely. Most (all?) aren't even in Worldcat, so I can't use OCLC numbers for that purpose either.

the ebook identifier uniquely identifies every ebook. standard ebook ebooks use the url as their unique identifier

Those are poor identifiers. A numeric or short alphanumeric identifier that can be part of the filename is important... I have as many as 5 different editions of the same title so title+author doesn't do the trick. Nor am I putting a url into the filename, couldn't if I wanted to as there are disallowed characters in a url in every filesystem I've ever heard of. How difficult is it to keep a incrementing catalog number like Project Gutenberg does? Anything that doesn't have a proper unique just seems unprofessional.

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#80

Post by dinkelberg »

bux93 wrote: post #8
kragen wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newby did an enormous amount to help Project Gutenberg, but he was not its CEO or founder. Probably if you want to thank one person for the project it should be Michael Hart (PBUH). As WP explains: > Newby got involved with Project Gutenberg in 1991 or 1992, became friends with founder Michael S. Hart, and was "undoubtedly the most consequential volunteer", according to a scholar writing about the history of the proj…

Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you. Imma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time.

I do not think that GP's comment was meant that way. GP simply wanted to clear up a misunderstanding that was apparently created by the renaming of this thread to "Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg, has died", which has been undone since. I am sure GP did not mean to detract from Greg Newby's contributions to the project.
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