From: Hal Fulton <hal9000@...>
Date: 2004-07-10T04:12:22+09:00
Subject: Re: PickAxe 2 licensing

Carl Youngblood wrote:
> I bought it practically the day it came out, and only discovered that
> it was going to be released for free a while later.  I thought it was
> worth it.

Definitely worth it. And I expect great things of the second one.

FWIW, the people at Sams were initially hesitant about _The Ruby Way_
because of the relatively low sales of the pickaxe.

In an unabashedly self-serving way, I posited (true or not) that the
open-sourcing of the book might account largely for its poor sales.
They seemed to buy this idea.

So in an indirect sense, the open-sourcing of the pickaxe was
instrumental in getting TRW to press. Hmm, nobody much calls it
the Coral Book but me. That's coral on the front, so I'm told. :)

When/if there is a 2nd edition TRW (which has been discussed but not
made firm), I've been thinking of the possibility of open-sourcing
the *first* edition. If the 2nd ed is significantly different (as it
should be), this might be practical.


Hal