Ahh we could discuss this at length. Firstly i agree "Books are not uniquely sourced by product providers, and they shouldn't be" - I think the difference is that there is a marketplace for books from these technologies hence why O'Reilly et al are there. When Microsoft first released Silverlight - the first books were from Microsoft themselves, the others quickly followed. I have had a similar experience with the Amazon web services, their own book by their product manager was an excellent overview, but i then had to wait for a bigger book to come out from one of the mainstream publishers.
With MV, there is little marketplace, the big publishers are not going to get involved. I say rocket are ideally placed because they have a team of respected consultants, who (i may be wrong here) may not be 100% utilised and could be funded to produce literature as a project maybe in conjunction with some outside resources. How many MV vars, or consultants have teams of consultants ? - if Brian or John were to write a book at 2 days a week for 6 months thats 20% or their fee earning time for the year gone, I doubt they would recoup that. If rocket do the same it's a much smaller percentage, and in the long run may indeed help licence sales. -----Original Message----- From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org [mailto:u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of Tony Gravagno Sent: 23 March 2010 04:51 To: u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org Subject: Re: [U2] Pick Pocket Guide > From: Tony Gravagno ... > just like Linux, SQL Server, PHP, Java, C#, Excel, and hundreds > of other technical topics > From: Symeon Breen > If you look at the other technologies you mention- the > actual providers of these technologies are leaders in > also providing books.... the providers are the best > suited to producing such literature, and in my opinion > should be taking the lead in this... My respected colleague, I must disagree. My extemporaneous sampling above mentions three Microsoft products and three non-Microsoft products about which Microsoft Press (I believe) does not have any publications. Many books are indeed published by Microsoft Press but take a look at your local store bookshelves and you'll find dozens of other publishers including Wrox, Apress, Manning, McGraw-Hill, IDG, O'Reilly, SAMS, and Addison-Wesley. "Books" are not uniquely sourced by product providers, and they shouldn't be. Who is the "provider" charged with writing books for open source software? We need books specifically because software authors are generally poor writers, and software providers generally don't invest in quality documentation. Put it back in their hands because they are "best suited"? The world would be a terrible place if software companies "figured out" that they could provide poor documentation and then make even more money as the unique source of for-fee books that explain their products. I also disagree that the DBMS software providers specifically are the best suited to producing product literature. I want "documentation" from my software vendors, but then I want them to continue working on the software, not books. The process for creating books is different than for product docs, and you'll get commentary about products from an independent author that you won't get from the software provider. One of the reasons why I said initially that this community is "anti-book" is that I've heard the same sort of commentary from other MV colleagues, that the DBMS vendors should be providing books, where you rarely get this sort of comment about any other product. Look at your local bookstore shelves and see how many books are written by the software provider - precious few. No, pushing the publication of books onto the DBMS providers simply goes nowhere. Don't bother. It's been tried before. DBMS vendors don't want to write books and they simply don't. They won't even accept help for their docs - both Clif and I have offered to help the DBMS vendors with their docs and after giving the concept some lip service these initiatives never go anywhere. Even if one indignantly maintains that they still "should" write books, it's a moot point - they won't. So we need to pick up from there and move forward. Best, T _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users