[Haskell-cafe] Writing "Haskell For Dummies Or At Least For People Who Feel Like Dummies When They See The Word 'Monad'"

[Andy Georges]

On 11 Dec 2006, at 19:35, Kirsten Chevalier wrote:

> On 12/11/06, Andrew Wagner <wagner.andrew at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Well, perhaps if nothing else, we could use a wikibook to
>> collaboratively work on the structure of such a book, and then from
>> that you could publish a "real" book. I don't really know the legal
>> issues, though. I am thinking of several books though which have been
>> written and released both as full paper books, and as free digital
>> books. Could we do something similar?
>
> I definitely think using a wiki to work on the book would be a good
> idea. I just wouldn't want to imply that that meant it would
> necessarily be a public wiki or that it would be around forever. The
> legal issues are basically that publishers don't want to publish books
> that people can get for free off the web (whether or not you agree
> with this logic). There are exceptions to this, like Lessig's _Free
> Culture_, but it's my impression that they usually involve authors who
> have enough sway that publishers will let them get away with whatever
> they want.

Well, I know that e.g., Cory Doctorrow puts his books online for  
free, and he seems to have no trouble also getting printed versions  
sold (see for example http://craphound.com/someone/). So I guess it  
should be possible to do. Especially because the demand will be quite  
large, IMO. A collection of real-world examples a la dive into python  
would certainly be on the top of my to buy list.

-- Andy