Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 09 Apr 1998 22:50:11 -0400
From:      "Christopher R. Maden" <crism@crism.ne.mediaone.net>
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Fw: Your Article "Freeware: The Heart & Soul of the Internet" 
Message-ID:  <199804100250.WAA02788@crism.ne.mediaone.net>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 10 Apr 1998 11:35:36 %2B0930." <19980410113536.65458@freebie.lemis.com> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

I was going to send this just to Greg, but my suggestions at the end
are possibly useful to the group at large.

[Greg Lehey]
> Tim knows about Jordan, despite his message.  We've repeatedly tried
> to get them interested in BSD, but there's something at ORA that
> resists.  I suspect it's not Tim (who lives in California), but
> somebody on the East Coast.

Is this one of those weird west coast/east coast UNIX things?  You'd
think we were rappers; I've never understood it.

Tim has allegedly resisted proposals for FreeBSD books; the only two
FreeBSD users I *know* of at O'Reilly are on the east coast.

Most of the directional decisions happen on the west coast; the
Cambridge office is almost exclusively production staff, though there
are some marketing people and editors.

> I've just about given up with ORA.  They seem to be relinquishing
> their position as the favourite UNIX publisher and chasing the NT
> crowd.  I'm surprised they even had this "summit".

I disagree with that.  My current project is the _UNIX Power Library_,
a CD of the six most popular UNIX books (Power Tools, vi, ksh, sed &
awk, UNIX Nut, and Learning UNIX) along with the Power Tools software.

I'd say the current focus is more on Web stuff like Perl, Java, HTML,
JavaScript, and XML.  The focus of the Windows stuff is one I don't
mind, and my home is Microsoft-free.  I like the thurst of the
"Annoyances" series.

The main problem is that Tim doesn't see that there's a market for
FreeBSD books, and he *is* in business to make money.  The reason he's
big on free software, and sponsored the summit, is that he realizes
that there *is* money there, as demonstrated by our wildly popular
Perl books.  He hired Larry basically to give him an umbrella to keep
Perl going, and to help come up with commercial tie-ins to the free
core software.

The main thing that FreeBSDers can do to change his perception is to
demonstrate that there *is* a market.  If you own O'Reilly books and
would like to see FreeBSD books, *tell us*.  If you don't own O'Reilly
books, but would buy FreeBSD books, *tell us*.  E-mail
nuts@oreilly.com.

Even better, if there's a specific book you think needs writing,
*write it*.  Prepare an outline and writing samples, and see
<URL:http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/intro.html>.  But don't do
this unless you are prepared not to have a life for quite a while;
writing a book kind of sucks.

- -crism
- -- 
"The secret of life is ventriloquism!" - _Complex World_
<URL:http://www.shore.net/%7Ecrism/>;

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: For my public key, finger crism@crism.ne.mediaone.net.

iQB1AwUBNS2ImHSaAdkmYoAJAQH3HAL9HE5xC13dEq1ev2Cp68hCxPZazpRS2mG6
6tVmQ4rVsjt26CqQlBSFPEtCViMCMH9OiL34sEJThxE1OowypRZn1p2k08uExSqr
GKu/y46n/dAP+Hy9ethkPsyROZX/rr5S
=G3m9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199804100250.WAA02788>