I don't think you really get it.

Randal (and his co-authors ;--) did a great job with "Learning Perl". Since he wrote it he has been on the road teaching Perl. Overall he has done more for the promotion of Perl than anybody but Larry and Tim O'Reilly.

What have you (and the people who put the Perl CD online) done for us?

It's not like you need the books by the way, did you notice that Perl comes with a huge amount of documentation? Did you have a look at the huge amount of information that you can get on the web, including Randal's Web Technique columns? So the books are nice, I have a whole bunch of them, but you can certainly learn Perl without them (how do you think Randal learned it by the way?)

Plus I thought I had spotted a couple of posts by merlyn around here, so it is not like he doesn't volonteer his time and skills for free here.

I don't think we can put O'Reilly, which put quite a lot of hard work into the development of Perl, and record companies, which are mostly concerned with marketing and money. You just have to compare the rate of royalties in both cases to see the difference.

One last question: what have you done for merlyn? While you were enjoying reading for free books he spent a good deal of time and energy writing, Randal was busy being the defendant in a pretty nasty lawsuit, then spent his life on the road to pay the legal bills. Did I hear you do anything to help him? Oh, sorry, you were busy being disgusted by him asking for a compensation (update: sounds better than the original retribution ;--) for his work...

So pleeeze, stop thinking that Open Source means that you can still people's hard work. The day merlyn stops writing books we will all be poorer.

Another student's view:

I agree that being a student is tough with lack of $$ and all. School is expensive, text books are expensive ... everything is expensive ... but I don't think that you can just steal people's hard work becuase you are a student.

Most extra resources are created as additions. They are not manditory for you to learn or use whatever you are trying to do. There are man pages, documentation, etc. that is available for free provided with whatever you are trying to learn.

Actually, students maynot have to steal, there is a lot of free resources for students that others may not have access to. These include:

The Library: Most schools have one of these, and you can find all types of books here ... for free. If I can't afford a certain book, I go here first. Some of the stuff is out of date, but you can usually find some of what you need here.

Profs: Go see a Comp Sci or Engineering prof and see if they have resources that you can borrow. There are certain licences that allow students to have access to s/w and other sorts. Ex: I needed a specific Java IDE for a Java course. The reatil package was too expensive for me at the time, but my deptment had a special licence that let the students have a copy of the IDE for free (the school paid the licence). It was not the full/pro version but it had more than what we needed. Plus, companies want people to use their products and who better to taget.

The Internet: There is tones of free tutorials, online communities (i.e.: Perlmonks), IRC channels, etc. Form what I have seen, every student has an Internet account and access to a computer, so let's do more than just surfing for Britney Spears' pics ... (nothing wrong with that, she is cute !!) ... and surf for resources and learning material. Search school web sites for courses, this usually generates a plethera of usefull, relaible info.

However, as a student I can see your point. I am not trying to prove you wrong or diss your point. There has been many, many times when I needed some s/w, a manual, a text book, etc. and it is way too expensive (i.e.: $100 for a 8086, out of print, "manditory" Assembly reference book ... which I no longer need). Sometimes you just have to look in other places for the info that you need.

Ducati ~~ Still a po' student ... but getting there.

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"We rock the body to rock the party ... until the party rocks the body"

De La Soul

Would you photocopy one of the books ?

If you personally can't afford the book/CD, you should persuade whatever institution you study at to purchase it for their library and then borrow it from the library for the time that you need it like any other book.

Just because it is easy to make the CD available on a web site doesn't make it any less of an offence than copying the pages of a book.

Would you consider it OK for me scan in "Learning Perl" (or any other book) and make that available on a web site ? - it is just the same IMHO.
--
Brovnik