> Several years ago, an editor at Addison-Wesley contacted me and
> asked if I had any interest in doing a book version of the
> comp.lang.c FAQ list. My answer was immediate, because I had
> (rather immodestly, I suppose) always imagined that the Usenet
> version was nearly publication quality already.
I must say that when I first saw the book version of your C FAQ, I was
taken aback and wasn't sure it was a good idea, for two reasons:
1. Many users have contributed in some way or other to my own FAQs, and
the FAQs would be much less useful without their help. Obviously, I
worked on the FAQs more than anyone else, but I still couldn't have
written them alone.
Other users helped me for free, and I think that there's an implied
understanding that I'd pass on their help to other users for free. I'm
not at all sure that they would have been as willing to help me if I
had said that I wanted their help for a book I was writing for profit.
If I later turn the FAQ into a book, I feel like I'm profiting from the
work of others.
2. If you receive a share of the profits from the sales of the book,
then you may be tempted to encourage people to buy it rather than get
the information for free on the net. In other words, it becomes to your
advantage to take information out of the Internet version and into the
book. I realize that the net version of your FAQ is already huge, but
the possible conflict still bothers me.
I have no problem without someone selling the FAQ, for example the way
Walnut Creek does with their CDs, so long as the same version remains
available for free on the Net.
Or may I'm just jealous. ;-)
-- Yves Bellefeuille <yan@storm.ca>, Ottawa, Canada Francais / English / Esperanto Maintainer, Esperanto FAQ: http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq.html Euro Currency Mini-FAQ: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/travel/europe/euro/
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