Darren Wyn Rees wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 01:45:03PM +0200,
> Peter van Dijk wrote in [EMAIL PROTECTED] :
>
> > > Can anyone recommend a good all round book for qmail?
> > > Something like an O'Rielly book
> >
> > The O'Reilly book is Not There Yet(tm).
>
> I wrote to O'Reilly about a year and a half ago, and they said
> the Qmail book would be ready "soon".
>
> I wrote to O'Reilly again about a fortnight ago, and they said
> one of the authors had "dropped out" and it would not be ready
> soon.
>
> Now, my 'Ask Tim' qmail question... What *is* really happening, Tim ?
>
> Darren
>
What *is* really happening is just what you heard a fortnight ago. It
happens all the time: authors say that they can get something done, but
then they can't. All this was complicated by the fact that Dan B. was
apparently saying a new version is afoot, but was not willing to say
just when it would arrive.
I poked John Levine, who is the author of the pair who has worked with
O'Reilly before, and who I know can get the book done if he gets his
other committments out of the way, and here's what he said:
John Levine wrote:
> I am finishing up some other books, one just went in the can last week,
> the other is 90% ghosted and should be done the first week in June.
> After that I plan to get to work on the qmail book. I'll get Russ to
> write as much as he can, but I figure I'll be writing most of it, and it
> should be done before Labor Day.
If John does in fact get it to O'Reilly by the end of the summer, expect
it sometime in late fall. It's hard to be more specific than that,
since we need a hard schedule (and some chapters in hand to demonstrate
that the schedule is going to be met) from authors before we can slot
the book for production and marketing.
That's the problem with making any kind of affirmative statement early
on. People start to depend on it, and are ticked off if it doesn't come
through.
If, by any chance, readers are wondering if this means that O'Reilly has
only a half-hearted interest in qmail, I'll merely point out that it
took us six years to get our sendmail book out, and a total of six
different authors, each of whom was given about a year to produce, and
given the boot when what they turned in wasn't acceptable. Sometimes a
book comes in easily, other times it comes in hard. But unlike other
publishers, we don't just hire a hack writer to crank something out on
schedule. We try to get someone who can do it right, and that sometimes
seems to mean waiting for all the stars to come into alignment.
--
Tim O'Reilly @ O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
101 Morris Street, Sebastopol, CA 95472
+1 707-829-0515, FAX +1 707-829-0104
[EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.oreilly.com
